For Want of a Clone
by Professor Image
Summary: For want of a clone, Naruto failed the genin exam. For want of a headband, Naruto stole a scroll. For want of a scroll, Mizuki tricked Naruto. For want of knowledge, Naruto learned the Shadow Clone jutsu. For want of a clone, Naruto became a legend.
1. The Time Before

Disclaimer: I do NOT own Naruto. Masashi Kishimoto owns the Naruto anime, manga, and other merchandise. I wrote this story with entertainment purposes in mind. I have made no monetary gain off this work of fiction. Please support the official release.

* * *

Disclaimer #2: Formulaic's "Konoha's Maelstrom" inspired the creation of this fanfiction. Formulaic was inspired to create "Konoha's Maelstrom" from Soulblazer87's "Leaf Style Maelstrom". The last inspiration for this story was Engulfing Silence's "Naruto: Shifts in Life". I in no way claim ownership to the idea that spawned this story, I only own original characters, plot, and themes that I may or may not create. Please support the original authors.

* * *

Summary: For want of a clone, Naruto failed the genin exam. For want of a headband, Naruto stole a scroll. For want of a scroll, Mizuki tricked Naruto. For want of knowledge, Naruto learned the Shadow Clone jutsu. For want of a clone, Naruto became a legend.

* * *

Enjoy:

* * *

For Want of a Clone:

Chapter I:

"The Time Before"

* * *

XXX

* * *

Hiruzen Sarutobi smiled.

"– and so, Naruto defeated Mizuki and secured the scroll, so I graduated him…" Iruka Umino trailed off, a sheepish expression on his face. "That is all right, isn't it?"

Hiruzen slowly removed his pipe from his lips, blowing out a long trail of smoke that curled in the air around his hat. His aged, gray eyes observed the humble chunin fidget before his wise gaze, uncertain of the Hokage's decision.

"As a matter of fact, yes, yes it most certainly is," Hiruzen said simply, tapping his pipe across his ash trail. As Iruka began to relax, Hiruzen spoke up once more. "A thousand you said?" Iruka nodded, more uncertain now with the Kage's odd prompting. Hiruzen smiled thinly. "And did Naruto appear at all as if he were uncomfortable after all the clones were dispelled." Iruka's eyes lit up with memory.

"Well," Iruka began, trying to find words with what he saw. "Naruto appeared a little strained, and while we were at Ichiraku Ramen he said that he had a little headache. This would be quite understandable for a little chakra exhaustion so I did not order him to get a check-up at the hospital." The hardening of the Kage's face had Iruka hurrying to explain, "It did not appear as if he needed to go, though, because he said that it had disappeared sometime before we left…so, I did not really think anything of it…"

Hiruzen Sarutobi, the Third Hokage of the Village Hidden in the Leaves, took a long pull on his pipe, trying to curve the burst of anger and worry he felt at Naruto's health. The boy was always unpredictable, and had the energy to exhaust many of his finest jounin and anbu with his antics. However, it was Naruto's ability to recover that made the old man wary.

"Iruka," Hiruzen breathed, turning to regard the face of the Hokage monument through his window, "I do believe that we are on the verge of a new era. To think, that there is a shinobi alive able to properly use and abuse _that_ jutsu…" the kage trailed off, slightly mystified by the direction of his thoughts; if Naruto _ever_ learned the secret of the Shadow Clone jutsu and used it for his own benefit…well, there were no limits to the things he could achieve…

Suddenly, inspiration struck the kage. He smiled.

Yes, a boy Naruto Uzumaki may be, but he had potential, of the kind that was simply staggering to behold. After all, from the glimpse of the blond child's grades, he _had_ to be talented to even scramble a passing grade in the academy when all his instructors did everything they could to fail him.

"You are dismissed, Iruka," Hiruzen waved the scarred chunin away. Iruka paused to consider speaking up, but shook himself and retreated from the room. Hiruzen turned back to his window and regarded the stoic face of his successor, the late Minato Namikaze and father of Naruto Uzumaki.

"It seems that your son will never cease to surprise me, Minato," Hiruzen chuckled, nodding at his distant thoughts. The long-term scope of the idea that was only now forming in his mind was pure brilliance. Naruto had the potential to do what no other Hokage had been capable of beforehand, and something that Hiruzen had dearly wished he could make happen: bring peace to the world…

"All it takes –" he chuckled, turning to his desk and retrieving a simple blank scroll. He unfurled it and brought out his brush, that he inked and began to swipe across the white surface, laughing. "– is a little push in the right direction!"

As his brush swiped down across the textured surface, Hiruzen began plotting, showing just why he was known as the "Professor". Hiruzen was certain that Naruto's training could bear fruits in a week, but what would the boy be able to accomplish in a whole month.

Hiruzen grinned.

Naruto's journey was only just beginning…

* * *

XXX

* * *

Naruto awoke early the next day, bleary eyed and hungry. It took his morning shower and his breakfast cup of ramen and a glass of milk to remember last night, and that he was now officially a genin.

This thought brought a smile to the child's chubby face. However, because he was alone he did not feel like shouting his elation. Still, the happy aura surrounding him was nearly palpable. He could barely wait for his team assignments next week!

The jingle of his doorbell stopped the boy's train of thought, and Naruto rose from his small dining table to answer the door. A rodent masked anbu stood silently in his doorway, and as Naruto looked up at him blankly, the man reached out and offered the boy a simple, unadorned scroll.

Naruto took the scroll silently and awkwardly stood in the doorway for a second before remembering his manners and opening his mouth. "Uh, thank –" however, the anbu disappeared in a swirl of leaves before the boy could finish, and Naruto grumpily stared at the spot that the anbu had stood mere seconds beforehand.

Naruto retreated to his kitchen and his cooling bowl of ramen, moodily grumbling about the impoliteness of the ninja forces. Once he sat the scroll onto his tabletop, he promptly forgot about it until he had finished breakfast and properly dressed for the day. Once he remembered it he smacked his head with a "duh!" and fetched it from the table.

Addressed to "Naruto Uzumaki", the scroll was otherwise plain. Naruto unfurled it, taking a moment to examine the familiar neat script. It sure looked like old man Sarutobi's handwriting.

It read:

_Naruto, be warned before you use the Shadow Clone jutsu again! Men have DIED from its use before. You will find a full breakdown of the jutsu below for your perusal. I have edited the information to what you need to know from the scroll because of your unique situation. Do NOT take this jutsu lightly!_

Naruto gulped at the knowledge that people have died from the use of the jutsu, and quickly read the scroll to understand what the Hokage meant. The first time around, Naruto only understood the explanation: "information overload" and "liquefy brain". It took several more tries before Naruto understood the gist of the information.

Shadow Clones were dangerous! Not just to his enemies but to himself, as well. While the high chakra requirement (something Naruto had to dig deep into his mind for information on this word as he had ignored most of the lessons on chakra, or found himself kicked from the class) was dangerous, it was the threat of information overload that was the most life-threatening side effect of the jutsu. The human brain could only take in so much information before the chemical and electrical processes in the brain ate the tissue alive… or so the scroll explained. Something about "aneurisms" and "massive hemorrhaging", the kind of medical and science babble that Naruto had ignored the exposition of, or the babbler had refused to explain what he had meant to Naruto when the boy asked.

Naruto was not dumb, just very ignorant. There were two reasons for this, of course. The first reason was that Naruto was a very practical, hands on type of person, and very motivated for independence, so he ignored most technical explanations either because he preferred to learn through activity, or did not wish to depend on others. The second reason, however, was that the times that he had pushed aside his pride to ask for help he was either belittled or sabotaged in some way, reinforcing his need for independence. Therefore, while Naruto did not understand the few (one of the most relaxed explanations he had ever heard, actually) technical terms in the scroll, he got the gist of it.

Shadow Clones could not be spammed by most people; not just because of how taxing on your chakra they were, but because for most people, using even one or two clones was enough to force the ninja using the jutsu into a coma.

As previously stated, Naruto was NOT an idiot, just much unlearned. At least, he was bright enough to point out inconsistencies in explanations given to him by his instructors. So immediately hearing that 90% of the world's population of ninja could only use maybe one or two clones regularly, and about ten percent could only use about six at a time, warning bells immediately began dinging between his ears.

The question was; how could he survive making over a _thousand_ Shadow Clones?

The answer was rather obvious, even though he did not come to it immediately. It took a trip down memory lane as he remembered the fact that he had _never_ been sick a day in his life. Most of the injuries that he received (through his own inexperience as a ninja) usually only took a few minutes to heal; with the most grievous (that one time he stumbled into an Explosive Tag's explosion one day in the academy) took only a single night to heal.

Naruto sat heavily into his dining chair, setting aside the scroll. His stomach was smooth and tan when he lifted his shirt, the flesh unblemished, but as he had learned there had to be a seal on it somewhere…he just had not found it yet.

If the Nine Tailed Fox was responsible for healing the damage that the Shadow Clone jutsu had on his body, then what? Yes, the transfer of memories was amazing, even the ability to transfer muscle memory to remember certain codes and combinations learned in espionage missions…but what purpose was there really for the jutsu.

Naruto felt as if there was something important that he was missing, a glaring fact that might have been hanging right underneath his nose. Naruto narrowed his eyes in consternation, wondering…then, suddenly, inspiration struck!

The Shadow Clone jutsu transferred their memories upon dispelling…which meant the transferring of any jutsu they learned while alive!

It was so obvious that Naruto wanted to slap himself, if he was not already salivating at the new inspiration. Jutsu…any jutsu that he could ever conceivably want was within his grasp – so long as he put in the effort, and the chakra to summon clones to learn it!

Naruto did not know how one clone could help him learn a jutsu, but he figured that if he left one clone for every jutsu that he wanted to learn that he would have more luck in mastering it! Yes, that sounded about right…

Nevertheless, the scroll had mentioned something about overlap, mostly in context of how dangerous it was for the ninja using the jutsu…but was it possible it also meant something else.

Whatever, Naruto was more concerned at all the possibilities before him… why, if it worked so well, then he could learn every jutsu in the world and become one step closer to becoming Hokage!

Unbidden, the image of Sasuke's Fireball jutsu, of the regular clone jutsu, and the various other jutsu that he had spied before in the academy came to mind…why, if he was right, he could learn them all!

Excited, Naruto climbed to his feet and raced to his door. However, a thought stopped him cold, and he narrowed his eyes as the rational coursing through his thoughts had him considering what to do. It was not as if he had any family to teach him jutsu, and he could not very well ask Iruka or old man Sarutobi for jutsu, because Iruka was injured and getting ready for the next semester and the Hokage was a busy man who would obviously not have any time for hyperactive jutsu junkies. So where could he learn jutsu?

When the answer came to mind, Naruto felt like hitting himself. In fact, he did. This explained the headache that followed him all the way to the library.

Getting into the library proved more difficult then he first thought. The Library had numerous files that he had to take to the Hokage Tower to file. Then he had to get his Ninja License to file as a ninja to then become a member of the library and actually get access to the heavily guarded ninja section in the basement. Since he was short on time (and patience), Naruto had to opt out of his original (and preferred) profile picture for his license, and just went with the basic, serious look.

Finally, Naruto arrived at the ninja section of the Leaf Village's library. Naruto created several Shadow Clones that got him surprised and cautious glances from the rest of the patrons and the clerk operating the checkout counter. Naruto proceeded to issue out orders, and the clones hurried away to find as many useful scrolls on jutsu, jutsu creation, and (as an afterthought) jutsu theory.

There were several dozen throughout the library, scavenging for materials. Naruto took the time to flip idly through a magazine sitting on the table he had claimed as his own, waiting for the Clones to start dispelling when they came upon interesting books.

The magazine had piqued his interest as it advertised an old interview with the Fourth Hokage a year before his death, and a little after the Third Ninja World War. Most of the interview was light, the Hokage making lighthearted jokes and being really relaxed. However, sometime during the interview he got serious.

"_A Hokage is more than just a really powerful ninja," _Naruto read, _"Not only must a Hokage know a thousand ninjutsu, but must be knowledgeable in ALL the ninja arts, including; Taijutsu, Genjutsu, Kenjutsu, Fuinjutsu, Elemental Jutsu, and Interrogation Jutsu, and Medical Jutsu. They also must possess an intimate knowledge in jutsu creation, politics, strategy, social interaction, and the sciences,"_ the Fourth claimed. Naruto blinked at the information revealed to him.

Frowning, Naruto summoned more clones and set them out to find the basics of everything that the Fourth Hokage had mentioned in his interview. At the same time, Naruto continued to read the magazine as the Fourth Hokage continued to pour his soul into the interview.

About a dozen clones popped while Naruto was in the middle of a sentence (_"A Hokage is more than just being the strongest ninja around. It also means that you will put the village before all else: in other words, sacrifice."_) and Naruto had to work very hard to focus, a new headache bursting into existence between his eyes as a download of information was forcibly shoved into his skull.

The clones read everything from the theory behind Shadow Clones (_"Advanced Theory of Espionage", _which the clone had to keep a dictionary by his side in order to read); to chakra control (_"This is Your Chakra, and this is How to Use it!"_ which caused the clone reading it to bash its skull in with the book and promptly dispel itself, all the while shouting "Stupid, stupid, stupid!"). There was quite the plethora of information that Naruto had to absorb, and it took a few seconds to orient himself.

When Naruto became aware of his surroundings again, he found that he was sitting on the floor, staring blankly at the wall. Someone was prodding him gently, murmuring, "Uh, um…are you all right?"

From the back of his mind, Naruto reread the text on the book one of his clones had read before deciding to dispel.

"_One cannot simply hope to understand the theory behind jutsu creation and use in a single night. While potentially a shinobi could learn any jutsu they set their sights upon, no one can truly master ANY jutsu." _The book had read. _"The implementation of jutsu is an ever exceeding process. Through each use of a jutsu one learns more ways to control and manipulate it to his desires…"_

"_What would take a certain amount of chakra and hand signs one day to focus that chakra, on another day could take significantly less chakra or fewer hand signs. Alternatively, in another analogy, by learning the nature of your jutsu intimately, one could manipulate the chakra cost of the jutsu to turn a gentle breeze into a raging tornado. Through slight deviancies in hand signs, chakra, and the understanding and application of said chakra in and around the body could have greatly differing effects."_

"_All it takes is hard work. Work, and work, and work, and work, and work, and work, and work, and work, and work, and work, and work, and work…until your body bleeds, your flesh is raw and tearing, your bones are brittle or broken, and until you are crying and agonizing on your pain and misery of your broken body. To understand jutsu takes practice, to the point that it may seem insane to pursue jutsu theory and creation to the average ninja, but to those that seek the path they will forever push past the limitations that others face…"_

"_Practice and practice some more…"_

Naruto blinked, smiling vaguely at the blonde-haired, spectacle-wearing girl looking down at him.

"Yeah," he breathed, suddenly feeling very sure of this fact. "I am…"

* * *

XXX

* * *

Naruto's first experience in training with Shadow Clones was a revelation…and the cause for a massive headache the likes of which Naruto had never known.

Having decided to try as many jutsu as possible, and forgoing almost everything else, Naruto had set about a thousand clones on the many jutsu that he had read about in the library. Of course, he had not expected the wealth of informational feedback that returned to him and ended up passing out when all of his clones dispelled at the same time at the end of the night.

Naruto awoke the next morning, seemingly no worse for wear, save for a ringing in his ears, a pulsing headache behind his eyes and a slight queasiness. Naruto knew that he had screwed up when he wiped his hand over his face and it came back covered in blood. A quick check in the training ground's nearby stream showed that he had been recently bleeding out of his ears and nose…

Naruto then decided that a thousand clones all dispelling at once was suicidal, even for him, especially when each clone had lived its short life of over five hours and spent the majority of that time learning. Unlike his fight with Mizuki, the clones he used for training lived for much longer, and varied in their jobs.

Because of the age and knowledge learned through the Shadow Clone jutsu, the jutsu was more exhausting for his mind. The only reason why he was still alive was probably that the Nine Tailed Fox had spent the whole night fixing the damage his idiocy caused for his brain…

Naruto dwelt on these thoughts for several minutes, kneeling in the training ground and tapping his chin thoughtfully. His brain was not particularly adapted for him using it to deduce logically things that he did not know for fact, and it especially was not used to him exercising it after recently healing from massive internal brain damage. He was greatly fatigued and his skull was pulsing with his pain, but he still pushed on. He was just thankful that it grew easier the longer he continued the exercise, the Nine Tailed Fox in his body probably hurrying to finish the last of the repairs.

So spamming thousands of clones for the sole purpose of learning jutsu was a bad idea…but was there any other way for him to learn quickly?

Maybe...Naruto thought, scratching at his chin and squinting at the tree line…maybe it was not about _how_ many clones he summoned, but _how_ he learned the jutsu?

The epiphany made Naruto pause, suddenly feeling sure of this line of thought…but did it have practical use?

Naruto sat down on the ground and entered a lotus position, propping his chin on his hand, his arm supported by his lap…

He was not good at logically thinking through his problems, but Naruto _felt_ as if this idea, this singular thought was close to the track that he needed to follow. Spamming Shadow Clones had the benefit of learning a lot in a very short amount of time. But if only one Shadow Clone was working on a single jutsu at a time, then it would be similar to him working on a jutsu on his own, just spread out and in a shorter time as there were more clones to vary his skills…but was that the end of it?

Naruto's eyes widened, an easy smile coming to his face.

If only one Shadow Clone working on a single jutsu could help him train, what about a dozen, a hundred. Of course, it was dangerous to dispel all Shadow Clones at once, so he would need to create Shadow Clones that would dispel in batches to cut back on the damage they caused to his brain…

Of course, more than a thousand Shadow Clones to work on all the jutsu that he had worked on last night was certifiably insane. Naruto now realized the folly of impatience, as his head hurt just remembering the pain caused by his mistake in training with Shadow Clones…but how could he better utilize his time and effort so that he learned as many jutsu as possible in the short amount of time that he had before team placements?

Naruto stood from the ground, dusting his body off, and retreated from the training ground that he had harbored himself inside. His stomach was rumbling with the need to eat, and he was much too distracted with his thoughts to seriously train.

Ichiraku Ramen was opening by the time he arrived, and the father and daughter pair greeted Naruto warmly.

Naruto secluded himself in the stand for the next hour, topping off a dozen or so large bowls of various ramen flavors, before he decided to pay the bill and leave.

As Naruto was leaving the stand, the boy had the inspiration to seek any hint of information at the library that could help him with his issue for training, and summoned a few dozen or so of clones to return to the library and seclude themselves in its doors for the next few hours.

With his time freed, Naruto spent the next hour lazily wandering the Leaf Village's streets, trying to pick apart his brain for any idea that would make his training easier…

As Naruto was idly examining a cabbage stand, an anbu appeared suddenly by his side. The two of them, Naruto and the older ninja, looked at each other for several prolonged moments, before the anbu handed him a scroll. Naruto took it, and the anbu immediately left the boy on the street, disappearing to parts unknown. Shrugging, Naruto unfurled the scroll and perused its contents.

_Naruto, I have decided to reschedule the genin assignments until third of June, a month from today. Please do not ask me my reasons, though, as they are top secret. I hope that you will use this time to train in ALL of your skills, not just any jutsu that you believe are "cool". If you have any questions, please stop by._

_Sincerely, the Old Man._

Naruto blinked in confusion, and reread the scroll a second time just to be sure that he understood. Then he smiled.

The old man was giving the genin a whole month to train, a month in which Naruto could use and abuse the Shadow Clone jutsu for his benefit. Naruto almost wanted to dance at his good fortune, but he collected himself and placed the scroll into his carryon pouch.

A whole month to train was just what Naruto needed. He needed to find all the limitations of the Shadow Clone jutsu, and optimize the jutsu to increase the speed of his growth. Moreover, he needed to learn techniques to improve his ability to learn in the first place, if he wanted to make any sense of jutsu at the library beyond the "use these twelve hand signs and apply chakra" method that he used when reading scrolls. Naruto wanted to be more than a jutsu sponge; he wanted actually to understand _every_ facet of being a ninja!

Giddy with renewed excitement, Naruto created more clones. While the majority of the clones went off to the library to seek knowledge, the last clone dispelled itself and sent all the creator's thoughts to the creator himself and all the clones already in circuit.

Instantly, Naruto got feedback from one of the clones in the library, showing that all the clones that he had already created acknowledged his orders and were changing their plans to suit them.

Naruto returned to his training ground, and sat down on the ground, relaxing, and waiting. Soon enough, several clones dispelled, sharing their knowledge with him. Naruto grinned and summoned several hundred clones.

It was interesting. Clones could not only share their memories with their creator and their knowledge with chakra manipulation, but also their muscle memory. By remembering the flow of their chakra, the movement of their bodies, and the careful consideration of movement, the clones were able to train in taijutsu and kenjutsu and share this knowledge with Naruto.

The Shadow Clones that Naruto had created were two fold. One group, about a few dozen or so was designated for correcting the sloppiness in the basic taijutsu that he had learned in the academy, now that he had clones that he could use to memorize the techniques described in the book, and practice against other clones. The other group, several hundred, was to practice the chakra control exercises that his clones had learned about; many of the books Naruto had read suggested several exercises to improve chakra control, which the books said that the vast majority of jutsu needed.

Naruto wanted to start small. Already having experience in the basics, the theory was that relearning them would not be as taxing on his brain and body. The second reason why he wanted to start with the basics was that he was sadly lacking in them. Most of his chunin instructors in the academy felt that it was not worth their time to teach him anything, and either completely ignored him, or worse, went out of their way to sabotage his growth. Naruto only survived the academy through a combination of brute force and trial and error. As the unofficial "training dummy" of the academy, Naruto regularly found himself pitted against the children of the academy only to have his classmates beat him into the ground. That kind of environment forced a child to adapt and grow, if only through sheer determination.

Faced with so much stronger opponents then him, Naruto had developed a usable, but rough version of the basic taijutsu taught at the academy. Even knowing how to give a proper punch was a luxury that he had not possessed, and so Naruto had had to learn things through a trial by fire.

Of course, now that he had the Shadow Clone jutsu, more chakra then he knew what to do with, a healing power that allowed him to heal from the abuse of said Shadow Clone jutsu, and the sheer determination to move mountains, Naruto was not going to sit on his thumbs and let himself be walked on any longer. He was determined to be Hokage, and anyone who doubted that was going to be in for a rude awakening…

While his clones were occupying their minds with the exercises that he had given them, Naruto decided to occupy his body with physical conditioning.

Naruto, as stated, was a practical ninja, and as a practical ninja, he preferred exercising with his body then his mind. Naturally, as he spent almost all his time not in the academy or eating and sleeping training his body, Naruto's body was very physically fit for a child his age. He was, in all actuality, one of the strongest boys in his class, maybe even _the_ strongest…if only just physically.

The problem was, most of his other classmates could, if only crudely, infuse their muscles with trace amounts of chakra that spiked their strength, speed, and reaction time well beyond his own. Augmenting the body's natural abilities with chakra was such a basic technique that no one thought to teach Naruto it. This was because, usually, sometime during the course of their schooling, an academy student accidentally learned about reinforcing their body with chakra when they were learning about chakra in the first place, and experimented with it from there. Naruto's problem, however, was that, like usual, he had _far_ too much chakra to safely infuse his premature muscles and bones with.

With barely any patience to speak of, Naruto had not immediately connected the fact that he could, and should infuse his body with chakra as most of the academy chakra exercises and jutsu were beyond him. This was primarily because of the simple fact that Naruto's chakra was much too strong and potent, and any jutsu and exercise he tried he overloaded with chakra and failed. It was the reason why he failed his genin test, and the reason why he could not perform the Transformation jutsu until he actually learned the proper hand sign to infuse his body with chakra and force a physical transformation. It wasted a whole lot of chakra, but he could brute force it with the hand sign that his academy teachers had not told him about.

The point was, with his clones working on tree walking, water walking, and the chakra infusing techniques that he had learned about in the library, Naruto wanted to train his body with not only the ability to use chakra to augment his physical attributes, but to train his body so that it was naturally stronger, and faster than anyone else's.

Of course, Naruto was limited to what he could do, since he did not have the money to buy weights, or gravity seals (as the scrolls that his clones had read in the library had suggested) so he needed to make due. The obvious answer was right in front of him.

First, Naruto started with warm up exercises, trying to push his body further then it had ever gone before. Jumping jacks, sit ups, pushups, leg curls, squats, pretty much everything that he had ever learned in the academy and in the library taken to ridiculous levels. After three hours passed, Naruto had completely worn out his body, from the bodybuilding, fat and calorie-burning exercises that he had partook in. However, these exercises were more then to strengthen his body, as they were also a test.

Sure enough, only thirty minutes later Naruto felt the burn in his legs, arms, and chest and abs subside slightly. Having suspected that the Nine Tailed Fox would work its hardest to cure him of the aches and pains of training, at the same time allowing his used muscles to heal and strengthen, Naruto had purposely gone all out with the training. Now knowing that he could use the Fox's power as a training tool, Naruto set to work.

Naruto had never experimented with the Shadow Clone jutsu and the Transformation jutsu, but it was actually laughably easy for his clones to transform. As they were constructs of chakra, their body composition was very malleable.

In the next second, Naruto's newly summoned clones had each transformed into a unique article of clothing. The clothing was orange, plain, and several sizes bigger than his body. Because of that, Naruto was easily able to shrug them onto his body.

Naruto did not know why no one else had tried this jutsu before, because it seemed obvious and very rational. If Shadow Clones could use the Transformation technique and become weighted clothing, then they would be perfect for training.

It seemed his logical deduction proved true. The Shadow Clones could simulate mass, density, and weight by forcing their chakra to form all the necessary components. Even as constructs of chakra, they still possessed a physical, if only flimsy body and a body needed mass, density and weight to be real.

Naruto was a bit too excited, however, and ended up doubling his body weight with the clothing. That was when he realized that there was more to strength and speed training then exercising with weights. There was also chakra training to consider.

At that moment, as the thought passed between his ears, a couple dozen of his clones regulated to chakra training and taijutsu training popped, giving him their memories.

Instantly, Naruto felt a slight change in him. It was not very noticeable, but Naruto was acutely aware of the knowledge that he gleamed from his clones. It almost felt as if he had been exercising his taijutsu and his chakra control for days. More to the point, Naruto was suddenly more aware of his chakra than ever.

There were no immediate results in chakra control or taijutsu. His memories showed that his clones were still utterly terrible at both, but the training did give him a better understanding of how to move his body, and how to project chakra from his body. Naruto knew that walking would be difficult with heavier weights, but right now, it was relatively safe to move about. Still, Naruto no less created another hundred clones and set them about trying to find a way to cushion his body weight with chakra.

After that, Naruto began the next leg of his training: applying what he learned.

As previously stated, there were no immediate results. Naruto's understanding of the Academy's Basic Taijutsu was only marginally better than before, helped by his clones in the library popping at that exact moment and giving him a review of what he had learned so far. However, it would take a lot more before he was proficient in taijutsu.

Naturally, when faced with this problem, Naruto threw clones at it.

The ideology behind the new training session in taijutsu that he relayed to all his clones through a dispelling clone was that half of the clones working on taijutsu would continue unchanged. However, the other half would devote their time to correcting any flaws in their stances that they could spot, or as practice dummies to help reinforce their knowledge.

With that settled, Naruto began trying to apply the knowledge gleaned from tree walking and water walking, but ended up sprawled on the ground as he fell from the tree only a few hundred feet up.

Naruto glared up at the tree, stood, and dusted himself off. He knew that it was too much to assume that he would have immediate results in his worst subject, but he had been hoping for more. Undaunted, Naruto threw more clones at the chakra control exercises, with the instructions to pop whenever they felt that they had learned something important that they wanted to share with the others.

After that, Naruto went back to working out his body, exhausting himself rather quickly due to the extra weight. Sometime during the course of the exercises more of his clones popped, making him smile at the things that the clones learned in the library, and at the progress in his taijutsu and chakra control clones.

As what would become a tradition, Naruto summoned more clones to fill the places of the one's loss. He was intimately aware of his own chakra reserves now, as the several hundreds of clones dedicated to chakra control had to become familiar with it during the course of their exercises. That was why Naruto was aware of the fact that whenever one of his clones dispelled some of his spent chakra returned to him. What was more, Naruto found that his chakra reserves started refilling almost as soon as he used them. The fact was, because of these two factors, Naruto felt almost no strain on his chakra reserves – only mental fatigue and the physical exhaustion from his various exercises.

Inspiration struck Naruto suddenly when he collapsed onto the ground and his clones imitating clothes dispelled from the force. If weights and gravity seals were so expensive, why could he not make his own? Besides, the Fourth Hokage had said something about Fuinjutsu…

Naruto summoned a single clone and it poofed as it dispelled and sent his idea throughout his clone network.

Naruto was practically salivating at the potential of his Shadow Clone jutsu. There were so many paths opened to him now, paths that he could only dream about before! Why should he stop at taijutsu, ninjutsu, and fuinjutsu? Why not learn them all!

The clones in the library were quick to reply, the ones that he had previously set to work on fuinjutsu dispelling and giving him the small amount of knowledge that they had gleaned before they had seen fit to inform him about the sealing arts.

Naruto rubbed his forehead, wincing in pain. Fuinjutsu was complicated! His clones had not only had to keep several dictionaries by their sides, but also other reference materials whenever they had encountered key concepts that the Fuinjutsu books recommended just to understand the _summary_ of what Fuinjutsu could do and what he needed to know to become a master of it.

Fuinjutu was more than a science, as anything around the seals one wanted to create could have a factor in its creation. It was more than just ink on paper, or blood on paper, or a container for him to hold things inside. The basic sealing scrolls where one hid their jutsu, their weapons, luggage and rations was on the lower tier of what sealing could do, and it was well beyond what the typical ninja was capable of. Even explosive tags were ludicrously difficult, requiring a combination of ink infused with gunpowder, purified chakra, and a clear set of instructions in the seal that the creator of the seal could corrupt just by breathing!

Fuinjutsu was insane, which was why it was so esoteric of a ninja skill. Only a very limited few had the patience, dedication, and the talent for learning the sealing arts, which was why the majority of Fuinjutsu creators were mediocre at best. Which was probably why the Fuinjutsu book his clone had read had referenced Jiraiya of the Sannin and the Sage's own student, the Fourth Hokage as being true "masters" of Fuinjutsu. They were likely members of the highest tier of seal creators on the planet.

The book had also claimed that besides Jiraiya and his student that a small clan in an equally as small nation off the coast was reputed to be full of masters of the sealing arts, but that since the clan was extinct that the book's creators had decided not to reference them.

Naruto was deeply incensed that the book on Fuinjutsu seals that he derived a lot of the basic knowledge of seals from would reference an extinct clan but not give their name so that he could not look them up and find any of their apparently awesome seals.

Regardless, Naruto spent the next few minutes fighting off a headache and trying to rest his tired body. The sun was hanging low in the sky, painted a deep red with waves of orange clawing at the edges. Naruto allowed himself to relax, letting the sight calm him. At the same time, he was going over a list of plans that his clones working on Fuinjutsu had thought to make for him.

Fuinjutsu was a valuable ninja skill – not only was it incredibly obscure, but it was quite useful. Anything a ninja could do with ninjutsu or genjutsu you could do the same with fuinjutsu. In addition, as rare as good, quality seals were, any Fuinjutsu master could make heavy revenue on the selling of their wares.

That fact, in particular, was what sold Naruto on Fuinjutsu's value. Since Naruto was an impoverished child who struggled just to survive, the idea that he could become rich on his skills was an idea that he favored greatly.

Nevertheless, the day was ending, and Naruto's body was recovered enough that he could move around with very little pain and effort. His clones were nearly constantly dispelling, so much so that Naruto barely noticed the strain on his mind. With a final summoning of a clone that sent the signal, his clones began dispelling in batches every ten minutes.

An hour later, Naruto was making his way back home, his arms behind his head and his eyes directed to the sky.

Much had changed for him today – more than he had first thought. Not only did he feel vastly stronger because of his new understanding of taijutsu and ninjutsu theory, but Naruto also felt very isolated.

Essentially, Naruto had spent hundreds of hours in silence, his clones dedicated to their tasks. Though the boredom and the impatience had mounted in many clones, the sparse conversations between them had not contributed to a healthy social life. Naruto did not want to admit it, but he felt a lot older today, more alone then he had ever felt before.

"Ah, there you are Naruto!" a warm voice broke through the boy's brooding. Naruto's face lit up at the familiar, friendly voice.

"Iruka-sensei," Naruto exclaimed, rushing to hug the older man. Iruka chuckled, patting the boy's back, a little embarrassed at the surprising show of affection.

"Haha, what is up with you, Naruto? It has only been two days since we last spoke – surely you could not have missed me _that_ much," Iruka scratched at his nose, his cheeks stained red as Naruto pulled away.

"Not really, no," Naruto chuckled, slightly embarrassed himself at his reaction. It seemed that confining himself to what was essentially several months' worth of solitude was dangerous for his psyche. Suddenly, Naruto was aware of the fact that he needed to be _careful_ with the Shadow Clone jutsu.

"Anyways, I just wanted to see if you were using your time productively. You have a month to get ready for your genin assignment, so I figured that you would want some pointers on where to start in your training," Iruka said, pulling Naruto with him down the street. Naruto smiled vaguely, nodding.

"Sure, Iruka-sensei, what do you have in mind?" Naruto wondered. Iruka laughed.

"Well, obviously, do I need to say that you first should start with the basics?" Iruka instructed simply, getting Naruto to sigh at the usual lecture. "New jutsu is great, of course, but if a castle does not have a strong foundation, then your enemies can easily break down the walls of the castle. The same is true with the basics taught at the academy…" Iruka explained. Naruto stopped, smiling, and held out a hand.

"I understand, Iruka-sensei," distracted, Naruto scratched at his cheek. "The thing is that I am already working on the basics." Iruka frowned.

"And how is that?" the chunin wondered. Naruto sighed.

"Well, Old Man Sarutobi told me some things about the Shadow Clone technique, and apparently, I can use it to train in chakra control, ninjutsu, genjutsu, kenjutsu, taijutsu, and even fuinjutsu!" Naruto exclaimed. Iruka frowned. "So, I spent all today working on tree walking and water walking, and the Academy's Basic Taijutsu exercises…"

Iruka worked his mouth in worry, startled by what the boy claimed. Finally, he spoke.

"The tree walking technique is usually only taught to genin who have had several months out on the field," the teacher pointed out, logically. "And the water walking technique is considered a chunin exercise…why are you starting on things so advanced?" Iruka questioned. Naruto shrugged.

"They don't seem so advanced to me," Naruto stated, and as an example walked over to a building on the side of the street and slowly walked up the wall for a few meters before jumping down. "See what I mean? I mean, it is not much, but it is _way_ better than that leaf exercise that you taught me in the Academy!" Naruto claimed. Iruka's mouth suddenly went very dry.

"What?" Iruka sputtered; alarmed at the direction his thoughts were taking. Naruto squinted; seemingly trying to make sense of the reaction, but the chunin was already plucking a leaf off a nearby bush and hurrying over. "Naruto, try floating this leaf off your head, now," at Iruka's exclamation, Naruto hesitated, before doing as asked.

As expected, the leaf went shooting away from Naruto's forehead without any build up. Iruka fetched another leaf and Naruto tried again, screwing up his face and focusing very hard. After three more tries, Iruka gave up with a sigh of regret.

"I'm sorry, Naruto – I have been wrong this whole time," Iruka explained. Naruto frowned.

"Huh?" Naruto wondered. Iruka shrugged, and the two entered Ichiraku Ramen stand.

After ordering, the two sat down and Iruka turned back to the boy.

"It is just that, I never conceived it as possible that your problem with chakra control could exist for an Academy Student," Iruka explained patiently, taking a sip of his water. "The fact of the matter is, people with lesser chakra reserves tend to have better chakra control then the people who have more chakra then average…and for people like you, Naruto, who have an insane amount of chakra at their despoil, then your chakra control is next to nothing…"

Naruto crossed his arms behind his head, and squinted his eyes in thought.

"So, basically I'm an awesome ninja, then?" Naruto questioned, trying to laugh away his own worry about his massive chakra reserves and his next no talent with chakra control. Iruka shook his head, frowning.

"There is more to being a ninja then massive chakra reserves, Naruto," Iruka explained, tapping the tabletop as he eyed the boy. At the boy's crestfallen expression, Iruka explained, "Oh, sure, having a large amount of chakra means that you can do more ninjutsu, genjutsu, and fuinjutsu, but that is not the end all be all definition of a powerful shinobi…"

"You might have a lot of power at your disposal, but you don't know _how_ to use it," Iruka stated, making a wide motion with his hands. "For example, how about your classmate, Sakura Haruno," Iruka pointed out, knowing that that would immediately catch Naruto's attention.

"Hm," Naruto looked to Iruka now, eyes wide.

"Yes," said Iruka, nodding. "I will give an example of her chakra control right now." He shifted; making sure Naruto's whole attention was on him. He sighed. "Okay, so Sakura has very good chakra control, we know that, but do you know why that is?" at Naruto's confused expression Iruka smiled, lifting a finger. "It is because she has so very little chakra at her disposal anyways. Because of that control, she makes up for her limited chakra supply by only using as much chakra as she needs for her jutsu, no more, and no less, so that she never wastes any. Her chakra waste rate is essentially 0%." Naruto's eyes widened at this knowledge. Iruka nodded, smiling. "Now, let us look at Sasuke Uchiha," the chunin said, making the blond frown.

"Now, Sasuke has a lot more chakra then Sakura, in fact a lot more chakra then most of the other students in your class, too." Naruto opened his mouth to say something, but Iruka raised his hand to stop him. "I said most, not all, Naruto." Iruka smiled. "Anyways, because of these large reserves of chakra, Sasuke's chakra control is nowhere near Sakura's. While Sakura wastes 0% of her chakra, Sasuke has to use maybe 20% more chakra to make a jutsu work, meaning he wastes 20% of what his jutsu requires." Naruto cracked a smile, so Iruka shook his head.

"Now, there's you, Naruto" Iruka sighed, tiredly. "Because you have so much more chakra then _everyone_ in your class, you have next to no control of your chakra. Meaning that you have to use a lot more chakra just to get even the simplest jutsu to work; because of that, you waste about 70% to 80% of what the jutsu requires."

"But how will this knowledge help me? Can't I just use some chakra control exercises to improve?" Naruto questioned. Iruka nodded.

"You can, but to understand the true depths of your problems in the basics, we need to look at your chakra control and, subsequently, your chakra reserves…" the chunin waved vaguely, just as Ayame Ichiraku appeared with their ramen.

They ate in silence for several minutes, Iruka counting the bowls that Naruto stacked and immensely glad that he did not need to pay for the boy's bill. Knowing what he now knew of Naruto's chakra reserves, it made sense the amount of food that the boy required on a daily basis.

"So, what did you mean about understanding my problem with the basics?" Naruto asked the chunin. Iruka sat aside his bowl, seeing that Naruto had most of his attention on the scarred chunin besides idly sipping at the broth in his bowl of ramen.

"Well, it is easy to understand really, and so simple I am horrified that none of us instructors, myself included, realized it." Iruka frowned, shaking his head at his cluelessness.

"Essentially, Naruto, when you told me in the Academy that you were concentrating _too_ hard on the Leaf Exercise, I did not realize that you were serious, or what such a thing could mean," the instructor claimed. He sighed, and hung his head. "Naruto, you have _too_ much chakra."

Naruto blinked, not sure what to make of this statement. Placing his bowl on the table, the blond boy scratched at his cheek. "Uh…what is that supposed to mean?"

"It means," said Iruka, raising his head to eye his student, "that I had never realized that it was possible for an Academy Student to possess so much chakra that _everything_ that we taught at the academy was completely useless. How you got the Replacement and the Transformation jutsu to work is anyone's guess, but if I'm right then you are both an incredibly lucky kid, as well as an incredibly foolish one…"

"Hey!" Naruto exclaimed, offended. Iruka chuckled, shaking his head.

"The point is, Naruto, that if we had known about this…problem of yours, then it could have easily been fixed." Iruka sighed, hanging his head again. "The thing is, you see, that you have too much chakra for the Academy's Basic Chakra Control exercise to work _at all_." He stated. He lifted his head and locked eyes with the boy. "At the level of control that you had when you first learned the Leaf Exercise, there was just no way that you could possibly use so little chakra that you would do anything else then launch it off your head."

Naruto narrowed his eyes, annoyed now at what his chunin instructor was saying. He took a deep breath and asked, "So how come tree walking and water walking work?"

Iruka chuckled at that.

"The reason why you can learn how to walk on trees or walking on water is because neither a tree or water is sensitive enough as to make it impossible to learn so that you can actually learn the techniques with the control you have right now…" Iruka shook his head, smiling ruefully. "The fact of the matter is, the worst you could do is launching yourself off of a tree or fall into the water. Those exercises are much more forgiving for people with higher chakra reserves…" he explained.

Naruto nodded, pleased that he had understand the gist of the explanation. Then he cocked his head, asking, "So, would I eventually be able to learn the Leaf Exercise if I got my chakra control to a high enough level?" Iruka nodded.

"Yes, why wouldn't you?" the chunin shook his head, smiling, "Though the level of control you would need is a lot more than what you would learn from just walking on water and on a tree. In whatever way you look at it, Naruto, you have a long road ahead of you…"

Naruto frowned, rubbing his forehead in aggravation, and groaned, "Ah, man, and I was hoping that I could get my control up a lot more in the month I have left…"

"You know, Naruto," Iruka said after several moments of silence, "I'm wondering why you even need to improve your taijutsu. Surely you could not have been ignoring _all_ the lessons on it in the Academy?" Iruka asked. Naruto chuckled, scratching his cheek.

"Well, I'd probably be a lot better at it if I had someone to explain it to me properly," Naruto shrugged, nervously shifting as Iruka narrowed his eyes.

"What do you mean, 'if someone explained it to you'?" Iruka questioned.

Naruto was about to open his mouth to try to laugh the question off, before inspiration hit him. Training from a book and with clones was nice, but it could only take you so far before you reached a plateau where you could go no further without official instruction. Moreover, training constantly with clones was a very lonely experience. While Naruto knew that Iruka could not actually help train him, maybe there was someone the chunin knew who could.

Therefore, Naruto shrugged, trying to make it seem as if his next statement did not bother him. "Well, before you started teaching me all my questions were ignored by my teachers, and none of my teachers wanted to show me how to properly use taijutsu, so I had to figure it out on my own…" he trailed off, suitably frightened by the suddenly murderous expression on Iruka's face.

Iruka was an orphan, a former class clown, and a deeply opinionated person who was very protective of his students. To hear Naruto shyly admit that his previous instructors had purposely sabotaged his training struck a nerve in the chunin. Why the Third Hokage had never done something about this was anyone's guess, but the first moment he could he was going to bring this issue to the kage's attention.

Taking a deep breath to calm his emotions, Iruka sagged in his chair tiredly. He eyed his former student, slightly amazed that Naruto could have come so far despite having numerous obstructions placed in his path that prevented him from even exploring his potential. The talent the boy must have must be amazing!

"Naruto," Iruka said, slowly. He shook his head, took another deep breath and continued. "Naruto, would you like for me to help you relearn your taijutsu?" the instructor questioned. Naruto frowned.

"Do you think you could?" the boy questioned, swirling his finger across the tabletop and not meeting the chunin's eye. "I…I know that you have a lot on your schedule right now, so I don't want to be a bother," then he snapped his head up and smiled, saying, "I could always find someone else to help me if it causes you too much trouble!"

Iruka frowned, shaking his head.

"While admittedly I still have a lot on my plate, I am still on sick leave because of my injuries," Iruka mentioned, sitting up slowly. He looked at Naruto gravely, saying, "Besides, if it is to help you then I can afford to take a few days off every week or so to help you with your taijutsu…"

After a moment of careful consideration where Naruto judged Iruka's sincerity, Naruto exclaimed, "You really mean it!" Iruka smiled sadly.

"Of course…"

"Thanks, Iruka-Sensei!"

* * *

XXX

* * *

Hiruzen Sarutobi smiled, watching the happy scene in his crystal ball. Naruto was laughing and hugging his Academy Instructor Iruka Umino, who was smiling sadly.

The Hokage knew that he would be receiving a visit from the chunin soon, and knew what Iruka would ask. The problem for Iruka was that Hiruzen _had_ already punished the Academy Instructors responsible for hindering Naruto. However, punishing a few did not stop the rest of the village from hating the boy. While most was fine ignoring him, a few, such as the ones that could make the decisions regarding Naruto's future as a shinobi, were willing to go the extra mile and tamper with the boy's ability to be a ninja.

Hiruzen himself did not want to play too big a role in Naruto's life so that the blond child would become dependent on his support. The Hokage knew that he was old and one day the boy would be on his own, so he wanted Naruto ready and capable of fending on his own. That was why Hiruzen had not stepped directly into the boy's life and taught him what he needed to be a strong shinobi in the first place. He had hoped that hiring Iruka as Naruto's Academy teacher would allow someone to see Naruto's problems and correct them without directly implementing the kage as the reason for their meeting, but Iruka had only recently started to see Naruto as a precious person and took an active role in his life.

It was pure luck that Naruto was able to learn the Shadow Clone jutsu, thereby setting him along a path to become one of the strongest if not _the_ strongest ninja in the world. From there it was all about subtly guiding Naruto without the boy's notice. Giving his letter to Naruto had allowed Naruto to connect the warning about the Shadow Clone jutsu to the fact that it was perfect for training the boy. From there, it was only a matter of time for Naruto to find ways to become stronger, and the old Hokage made sure to place the scrolls that would have the greatest effect on Naruto's training in his path within the library.

After that, it was purely guesswork, but Hiruzen had predicted that Naruto would be starting on chakra control and taijutsu within the first few days of training, so had directed Iruka to the preteen's path. Though the Kage did not know if Naruto would convince Iruka to help teach him taijutsu, Hiruzen had felt confident that at the very least he would convince Iruka to find him another trainer.

Naruto had a lot of potential, and in the world of ninja, a shinobi's power was not their physical capabilities, but the ability to inspire and to control their comrades and underlings. Conditioning Naruto to become the strongest shinobi in the world and inspiring his complete loyalty in the Village Hidden in the Leaves was only part of Hiruzen Sarutobi's master plan. Subtly helping the boy to realize his virtues and vices and to develop the leadership qualities that would make him an excellent Hokage was another. To achieve peace Naruto would have to be more then strong; he would also have to be kind and compassionate with the ability to forgive.

To break the cycle of hatred, Naruto would have to embody the Will of Fire…

The only question was…whom should he introduce to Naruto next?

* * *

To Be Continued…

* * *

Author's Note:

That is the First Chapter of "For Want of a Clone". I hope you all enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.

As stated in the Author's Note at the beginning of the chapter, three works of fiction inspired this story. The biggest inspiration for this fic was "Konoha's Maelstrom" by Formulaic, and the other two I only read a very tiny amount. I claim no owner of the idea that inspired this story; I just had inspiration for it.

I have paraphrased certain sections in this story from "Konoha's Maelstrom", but as you can see, my version has a different result and different plot. This is not just a "oh, I have changed a little around and so I cannot be accused of plagiarism" kind of deal, but an honest to god difference.

The only reason why I paraphrased anything was that I could see any possible way of making Formulaic's reasoning any better, and I felt that all his reasoning was so good that it would have been a crime not to use it. However, my story is completely different. For one, the Third Hokage is not some manipulative arse face that has been subtly pushing Naruto to become a soldier this whole time. It is obvious my version still wants Naruto to be a powerful shinobi and to someday take over as Hokage and bring world peace, which is why the Sarutobi in my story is manipulating events to make Naruto stronger.

Another thing is; I plan for Naruto to be a _lot_ stronger than his classmates are by the time Team Assignments come around... This does _not_ mean I intend to overpower Naruto, because, as the Naruto world shows, there is constantly stronger and stronger ninja being introduced that push Naruto's limits. It is just my version of Naruto will be more ready to take on these threats then canon Naruto.

In addition, there will be no bashing in this fic if I can help it. I am somewhat annoyed with all the bashing on this site. Yes, we all know that Sasuke is a traitorous bastard, but that does not mean that bashing for the sake of bashing is necessary to make a fic good. If I do write bashing, then it is because of a situation in the canon that my versions of the characters find themselves in, or an omake.

Finally, pairings…as no doubt everyone wants to know.

Do not ask me about them, plain and simple. I do not intend for this to be a harem, I do not _know_ if I intend for this to be a multi-ship or a monogamous story. I do not even know which girl, girls, woman or women I would want Naruto to pair with…and truthfully, I could care less about pairing him with anybody _right_ _now_.

Naruto is a twelve-year-old boy. I could not even write relationships between Naruto and another character now. If I did, it would be later on, probably around Shippuden.

You _may_ suggest a particular pairing for the story, but remember, no harem, and if it is a multi-ship then it needs to be only between Naruto and two others. I primarily want to see it monogamous between Naruto and a girl/woman, but I am up for multi-ship as well. I do not want any suggestions on yaoi or yuri, either. Do not ASK me about pairings, only suggest. In addition, if you are going to _suggest_ a pairing, then give me a DAMN REASON!

Anyways, as always, review and tell me what you think…

Ta.

Professor Image.


	2. The Time Between

Disclaimer: I do NOT own Naruto. Masashi Kishimoto owns the Naruto anime, manga, and other merchandise. I wrote this story with entertainment purposes in mind. I have made no monetary gain off this work of fiction. Please support the official release.

* * *

Disclaimer #2: Formulaic's "Konoha's Maelstrom" inspired the creation of this fanfiction. Formulaic was inspired to create "Konoha's Maelstrom" from Soulblazer87's "Leaf Style Maelstrom". The last inspiration for this story was Engulfing Silence's "Naruto: Shifts in Life". I in no way claim ownership to the idea that spawned this story, I only own original characters, plot, and themes that I may or may not create. Please support the original authors.

* * *

Summary: For want of a clone, Naruto failed the genin exam. For want of a headband, Naruto stole a scroll. For want of a scroll, Mizuki tricked Naruto. For want of knowledge, Naruto learned the Shadow Clone jutsu. For want of a clone, Naruto became a legend.

* * *

Enjoy:

* * *

For Want of a Clone:

Chapter II:

"The Time Between"

* * *

XXX

* * *

"You can't be serious!" Iruka exclaimed, tensing in his anger. Hiruzen nodded, placing his signature stamp onto the papers that he was currently filing.

"I'm afraid so, Iruka," the Kage said sadly, looking up from his papers to lock gazes with the chunin. "Despite my best efforts, punishing those Academy Instructors in charge of teaching Naruto did not show favorable results. On the contrary, it has inspired many others to hate Naruto…" he shut his eyes and hung his head at his shame in the Hidden Leaf Village's citizens.

Iruka watched the old Hokage reflect on his many mistakes. The chunin's thoughts about his former student distracted the scarred man. It seemed that life was never going to cut the boy any breaks.

"Then how come I did not know about these facts?" Iruka prompted, breaking into the Kage's thoughts. "I only knew that those instructors were fired, I did not know _why_ though…" He pointed out. Hiruzen smiled.

"I have worked to limit the rumors surrounding Naruto. If the whole Academy knew the reasons for why those instructors were fired, then no one would have taught the boy…after all, if you had known that you could be fired for the way that you treated Naruto, would you have taught his class?" Hiruzen pointed out. Iruka opened his mouth to deny any accusation, but decided against it as he thought about the response. Finally, he nodded his acceptance.

"Still, to think that anyone would purposely sabotage a student's chances as a ninja just because they do not want to look past their prejudice," Iruka frowned, trailing off. Hiruzen removed his pipe from his drawer and tapped his chin with the mouthpiece.

"Prejudice exists in all men, Iruka," the Kage explained patiently. "You yourself were unwilling to look past the mask of a clown that Naruto wore because you harbored feeling of hatred yourself…" Hiruzen lit his pipe and brought it to his lips. Iruka winced at the reminder of his own faults. "The fact of the matter is, Iruka that as long as humanity walks this planet, that hatred, anger, and fear will exist in the hearts of man. These evils are ever present in our daily lives, and must be fought in our souls for even a semblance of peace…" Hiruzen trailed off.

"But how will Naruto ever prove his worth to the village? How will he ever become Hokage if the villager's hatred follows him like a shroud?" Iruka questioned. Hiruzen blew out a ring of smoke, humming thoughtfully.

"I have faith in Naruto's abilities to change the hearts and minds of this village's people…I have never seen a child with such potential for good in my life…" Hiruzen smiled fondly. "Despite the hatred of the village following him wherever he walks, Naruto's heart loves this village without question…or, at the very least the _concept_ of his home village." Hiruzen shook his head. "Once Naruto finds people to call precious in this village, I imagine that he will begin to love the Leaf Village more as a place to call home then because he agrees with its ideologies…"

"So you really believe Naruo could become Hokage?" Iruka questioned. Hiruzen laughed at the question, almost as if he had heard something incredibly humorous just because it was incredibly foolish.

"Yes, he has a long way to go yet, but I believe with all my heart and soul that Naruto will one day become the Hokage of the Village Hidden in the Leaves," Hiruzen stated with conviction.

* * *

XXX

* * *

The week following his conversation with Iruka and the agreement to meet again for taijutsu training was incredibly long and yet incredibly short at the same time.

The week itself seemed to fly by at ridiculous speeds, and yet it seemed to crawl because of Naruto's abuse of the Shadow Clone jutsu. What was only a few hundred hours in real time was several hundred thousand hours to Naruto thanks to the Shadow Clone jutsu increasing the amount of time Naruto had to train.

In the week that followed their agreement to train, Naruto had only met with Iruka to train three times. Injured as he was, Iruka could not directly involve himself in Naruto's taijutsu spars, and so Iruka found himself regulated to overlooking and analyzing the boy's form.

Still, despite the fact that Iruka could not give physical examples of the katas and taijutsu forms that Naruto needed to learn (as he would tear the stitches in his back doing so), Iruka's training was practically light years beyond what the boy's other instructors were willing to teach Naruto.

In the three days that followed their initial training session, Naruto had easily picked up and mastered the very basic taijutsu style that the Leaf Village's Ninja Academy taught.

Iruka himself had been unprepared for witnessing what Naruto considered "training", having thought that the boy would only be using one or two clones as the information feedback was infamous for killing the jutsu's users. When he had walked into the training grounds that Naruto had called his own that first day and saw for the first time well over five hundred clones working on chakra control exercises, Iruka had panicked and tried to rush Naruto to the hospital in an effort to save the boy's life when the clones inevitably dispelled. Of course, it was unnecessary, he would learn, as Naruto explained to him that five hundred clones dispelling was not too strenuous, and that he could and had survived the dispelling of over a thousand clones at a single instance.

Shocked summed up Iruka's mindset then, and it took the whole morning while helping to correct the first dozen or so katas in the basic taijutsu Naruto was practicing for the chunin to wrap his mind around the absurdity of Naruto's capabilities. After that moment, Iruka spent the next two days instructing a single large group of Shadow Clones in the various katas that the Academy taught, working between the hundred or so clones that would dispel whenever he helped them finish the kata only for another clone to replace them. From what Naruto had told him, every clone that Iruka would teach a kata would dispel and relay their knowledge to the several hundred other clones in the area that would practice the katas that the dispelled clones had learned until they mastered it.

With literally hundreds of thousands of hours dedicated to learning the basic taijutsu taught at the Academy, it was no wonder that Naruto mastered it within the three days Iruka was teaching him. From there, they had brain stormed until Iruka suggested that he help Naruto learn more chakra control exercises, and develop his own unique taijutsu. When Naruto questioned why he needed a unique taijutsu Iruka had tried to explain to the best of his abilities.

Ninja were largely assassins. Because of that, they needed to learn new ways to kill their opponents. The Academy's Basic Taijutsu was a nice starting point for taijutsu training, but it was so widely known and so full of holes that it was unsafe to use it in the real world. Iruka explained that it was better to start with the basic taijutsu and work up from that, modifying it into his own unique taijutsu that complemented his abilities as a ninja.

Naruto questioned why he could not just learn another taijutsu style, and Iruka pointed out that everyone was different and had their own unique way of fighting; something that made learning a pre-existing style complicated and reduced the effectiveness of the ninja's capabilities. When Naruto did not immediately understand this explanation, Iruka hastened to elaborate on the concept.

Each ninja had a different body type, a different mindset, different chakra, and different skills. Forcing one ninja into a pre-existing mold only reduced the effectiveness of their unique skills, as they would have to forget everything that could potentially make them a formidable shinobi and learn a set of skills not designed specifically for them, reducing their effectiveness as a ninja.

The explanation still did not click with Naruto, forcing Iruka to dumb it down for the unfortunately unlearned child.

"Think of it this way, Naruto," Iruka explained, making a gesture to the rest of the clearing which was filled almost completely with Shadow Clones. "No one else in the world could train effectively with Shadow Clones like you can, so if you followed someone else's example and only trained without them then you would reduce your effectiveness as a shinobi. Conversely, if another person tried to train using your method then he or she would die. Do you understand? Everyone is unique!"

"So, what you're saying is," Naruto muttered, narrowing his eyes and working the concept around in his skull, "is that someone else's taijutsu style just would not fit me because the style was not designed for me to make use of my awesome ninja skills," he grinned at finally understanding where Iruka was going with the explanation.

On the third day of training with Iruka, Naruto spent the second half of the day working on the beginning forms of his own unique taijutsu style. Naruto had had to send several dozen Shadow Clones to the library to find any information on the theory of taijutsu creation, while using a hundred to work with Iruka to form a basis of what he should build his taijutsu style on.

In the end, they decided to base the theory of Naruto's taijutsu style on a combination of the canine pack mentality and the hive mind of insects. By making use of Shadow Clones in his taijutsu style, every Shadow Clone and the real Naruto would work in perfect synchronization, complementing each other so totally that they would exist as one single-minded unit that was stronger as a whole then individually.

At the same time that Naruto and Iruka were working on taijutsu Naruto was working independently on chakra control. Within only days of beginning his unique Shadow Clone training, Naruto had managed to master tree walking and water walking, mostly because they were both so similar. After that came the difficult stuff…

Finding a waterfall to walk up was difficult, especially one large enough to make use of the Shadow Clone jutsu. Then Naruto had had to reinforce his Shadow Clones with even more chakra so that the waterfall's crashing waves would not immediately dispel his clones. Having to walk up moving water proved much too difficult for Naruto's clones to easily master, and on the third day of Iruka's training none of his clones had succeeded to walk up to the top of the waterfall.

While this was occurring, Naruto was using his clones to expand his knowledge on theory, science, math, language, and other concepts that he could not just bulldoze his way through with the use of thousands of Shadow Clones and ridiculous chakra reserves. It was slow going at first, because of his lack of theoretical knowledge, but as Naruto had finished his training with Iruka on the third day, he was actually able to make it through one book on math without falling asleep.

In addition, throughout all his training Naruto had continued to exercise his real body by using his Shadow Clone weights. After only a few days Naruto realized the impracticality of weighted clothing and just switched his clones to transforming into body weights that he could tie around his body. From there it was a slow process of exercising, resting, eating, and repeating. The more he exercised, the more he needed to recover, and the more he needed to eat to strengthen his muscles.

On the third day of Iruka's training, as Naruto wrapped up his exercises and dispelled his Shadow Clone weights, which were now up to five times his body weight, Naruto realized that he could not keep up this rapid pace, as he did not have the money to keep up with his food bill. The more he used Shadow Clones, the more his chakra reserves grew, and the more he exercised, the more muscles he built up. To supply the constant exhaustion of his energy Naruto needed more and more food, which was quickly eating up his Allowance. Therefore, if things continued he would not have any money to support himself within only a few more days.

Faced with a new problem, Naruto threw clones at it.

The first order of business was acquiring a near constant food supply that would allow him to keep up his rate of growth without using up his Allowance. Naruto regulated his Shadow Clones to the library to look up any books on forging and gathering, something that would allow him to stop relying on his Allowance for food.

Hunting and gathering were basic skills, and found in both the civilian and ninja sections of the library. Any civilian skill in hunting and gathering had at the same time a ninja version.

The best part, of course, was that as he had learned, his Shadow Clones could become the tools needed for foraging. Of course, he had learned that Shadow Clones could not become a ninja weapon, as his brief attempt to learn kenjutsu with his clones had shone. In order to use them as weapons, a Shadow Clone needed a lot more chakra then what they usually received so that they could take more than one blow from an enemy's weapon. However, becoming a hunter's tool, such as a skinning knife, or a piece of rope to capture a wild animal, was perfectly within their abilities.

There were other limitations to the transformation jutsu that his clones used; first: while a clone's body was much more malleable, being that they were chakra constructs, a clone's shape and appearance was limited to how acutely they could control their chakra. For instance, a clone could easily become a thick rope or chain, or a Fuma Shuriken or zanbatou, but could not turn into ninja wire or a tanto without severe changes in the physical shape. If a clone tried becoming ninja wire or a tanto, then they would either be a lot thicker than the actual ninja tool or much, much longer then the tool itself because of their inability to compress their chakra.

Second: while Naruto himself could easily transform into a weapon and still be aware of his surroundings, his clones could not. The transformation jutsu muffled his clone's perception of the outside world, and could only know how to react by other clones dispelling and relaying them information about the world outside their little solitary bubble. This made using them as weapons difficult, because Naruto would have to dispel _all_ his clones just to dispel the ones transformed into weapons, which he would have to if he wanted quickly to change weapons on the fly. It just was not practical.

Last: since Shadow Clones were _chakra_ constructs, they each had a chakra signature, making them obvious to any ninja even partially able to sense chakra. Naruto had had to invest hundreds of hours reading up on chakra suppression theory; so that he could hide his clones, but he knew that despite his hard work they would be rather obvious to any chakra sensor type ninja.

With all these facts circling in his brain, Naruto sat down to his last luxury meal for the near future with Iruka and Ayame Ichiraku of the Ichiraku Ramen Stand, glad to have some pleasant company to talk with.

The next day, one of Naruto's Shadow Clones woke him up and treated him to the first "outdoor" meal that he had ever received in his life. The wild chickens and salad that the clones had attempted to cook were good, if only slightly overcooked. Nevertheless, Naruto would sort that out in time as the boy built up the practical skills to live off the land. The meal served its purpose though, as Naruto returned to his training grounds and got back to work on his own training with a full stomach.

Naruto had filled the village with nearly a constant supply of Shadow Clones, some that never even dispelled unless another Shadow Clone came to take their place. Of the clones in circuit, a handful spent a particularly long time at the various farms in the village bartering prices on milk, eggs, and other necessary foodstuffs that the boy and his Shadow Clones could not find out in the wilds easily. Bartering, you see, was another skill that Naruto's Shadow Clones had been working on since he had decided to rely on his own self for food. After reviewing a book on the average jounin's daily diet, Naruto and his clones had realized that a diet of constant Ramen was neither healthy nor would it allow the boy to thrive in the world of ninja. Not only would his lack of vitamins and minerals stunt his growth, but also the lack of protein he ingested would not allow him to build the muscles and the chakra needed to succeed in his profession.

The idea to barter for the foods that he could not readily find in the wilds was merely a half-formed one that he had thought about while eating at Ichiraku Ramen the night previous. He needed milk and eggs to build up calcium and iron, and with the Nine Tailed Fox preventing him from getting sick it was perfectly safe for him to consume unpasteurized and homogenized milk and eggs. However, what had cinched the idea for the boy was the fact that unprocessed milk and eggs and other foodstuffs were significantly cheaper than processed, and you could buy them in bulk, too.

With the Nine Tailed Fox healing his body, Naruto hypothesized that that the demon would use any nutrients that the boy acquired to fill out and strengthen his body so that he could survive in this world. The idea that he could use the Fox's power to forcibly strengthen and grow his premature body was one that Naruto favored, and when he had told Iruka the idea the chunin had agreed in the boy's reasoning, even complementing him on his ability to deduce this particular answer.

Naruto had sent his Shadow Clones to the local farms, and had them bartering with the rough skills that they had developed the night previous. Unlike ninja skills such as ninjutsu and genjutsu and his taijutsu, social skills, such as bargaining for a drop in the price of a particular food, he had to learn through interacting with other people as his Shadow Clones were just mirror images of him and would agree with him on anything.

At the same time that Naruto was working on his taijutsu, chakra control, and physical conditioning, he had his clones hunting and gathering in the forests in and around he Hidden Leaf Village. As he had noticed, Naruto constantly needed more and more food to satisfy his growing appetite, so he would need to find enough food to last him the rest of the day.

Partway through the training, one of his clones in the library that had been studying fuinjutsu popped and relayed their epiphany.

Actually making it through the first chapter of a book on fuinjutsu, the most difficult of ninja skills was a massive feat for the previously unlearned boy. More to the point, Naruto now felt confident in his understanding of the basics in fuinjutsu that he was willing to try one of the three examples of seals in the first chapter of fuinjutsu that his clone had read.

Excitedly, Naruto summoned a group of Shadow Clones and ordered them to return to his apartment and fetch his blank scrolls and calligraphy set before returning to the clearing.

As his clones were departing another clone in the library dispelled, and Naruto could not help grinning.

Out of all the ninja skills that he had learned in the Academy there were never two that he had been so adapted to then stealth and trapping. Though people did not expect him capable of sneaking up on enemy ninja and assassinating them, nor setting up obscure and immensely deadly traps, Naruto had had enough skill in both to run the anbu and the majority of the Leaf Village's chunin population ragged.

On a whim, Naruto had sent half a dozen clones to the library to brush up on his knowledge in stealth and trap creation. Actually getting near immediate results back was a surprise, as was the immediate understanding of the material covered in the scrolls that his clones had read.

As with every other ninja skill that he had shown even a partial talent in, Naruto had hyperactively specialized in stealth and trap creation in the Academy, specifically with anything that he could use in pranks. The rush of the Shadow Clone jutsu had nearly made him forget his skills, but now that he had remembered them Naruto realized that he could incorporate those pre-existing skills into his own fighting style.

The Shadow Clone Explosion ninjutsu was perfect for this unique fighting style and combining that with his Clone's ability to transform into any shape they desired meant that even his basic ninja tools had the potential to blow his enemy to pieces.

At this time, his clones returned, and he set them to work on the first rudimentary seals discussed in the fuinjutsu book that he had read. They would continue to fail at creating the seals even at the end of the week.

For the rest of the days of the first week Naruto worked on these skills, while setting up contacts with the local farmers for a rather generous supply of food. Apparently, the farmers appreciated anyone who was willing to pay top dollar for their products, as the village took a lot out of their revenue with taxes. An off-the-books deal between Naruto and the farmers was perfect for them. Not only would they not have to pay to process the food, but they also would not have to pay taxes to put them up in the market.

On the first day of the second week Naruto's training took a turn.

Iruka came out to the training grounds to review the progress in Naruto's taijutsu and chakra control. When the chunin caught sight of the fierce melee between Naruto and his Shadow Clones as they showed off the very crude version of their unique and new taijutsu style the instructor could only whistle appreciatively.

The style had grown out of control ridiculously fast, becoming more than just a taijutsu style as Naruto incorporated his Shadow Clone jutsu to great effect, forming ninja tools and traps that caused his enemy clones that had transformed into various generic missing ninja literally to walk into their own deaths. From really thick ninja wire, Fuma Shuriken, trap-ropes, exploding clones, crude and simple leg traps, and spiked pits, anything and everything Naruto's clones became was some kind of immensely deadly trap that the enemy clones were lead into by a combination of taijutsu and Shadow Clone barrages.

In only ten minutes, a Shadow Clone army of a few hundred Naruto had reduced to zero. It was even more startling to see that Naruto was only breathing slightly harder despite the show of superior battle prowess.

Iruka examined the utterly destroyed training ground, complete with hundreds of uprooted trees, and pockmarked by massive glassy craters, the chunin suddenly realizing that his student had surpassed him.

Of course, that was not that surprising. On the shinobi totem pole, ranked from Academy student all the way to Kage, Iruka Umino was one of the weaker chunin out there. Barely even capable of ranking as a C-Class ninja, the only real trait that Iruka possessed that made him special was that he was a chakra sensor shinobi, which made his job as a chunin instructor at the Leaf Village's Ninja Academy understandable.

The fact of the matter is, with Naruto's pure talent, raw potential, and rate of growth, it was not surprising that he was already pushing past the lower tier of a C-Class shinobi and moving into the middle tier of the C-Class. However, there was a big difference between the middle tier of C-Class ninja and the top tier, and there was an even bigger difference between C-Class and a B-Class ninja.

It was just so surprising that Naruto was already superior in skill to an actual chunin, and yet he had not even spent a day as an official genin yet. Out of Naruto's other classmates, only three others were likely comparable to a chunin: they were Shino Aburame, Shikamaru Nara, and Sasuke Uchiha.

Out of the other three, only Shino and Shikamaru showed the necessary skills and traits needed to become chunin while taking the official chunin exams. Sasuke was too independent and not nearly trusting enough to rely on a team, and so would not make a good chunin. However, on skill alone Sasuke would probably be tied with Shino in battle prowess.

While Shikamaru was lower-tier C-Class, both Sasuke and Shino were middle-tier pushing on upper-tier. They both would likely be either upper-tier C-Class or lower-tier B-Class after the month of training that they had been given before team assignments, while Shikamaru would likely still either be lower-tier C-Class or middle-tier C-Class.

Naruto rivaled both Sasuke and Shino, but had the potential to surpass them easily in the month given to his class to train. If Naruto had not reached lower-tier B-Class by the time this month was over then Iruka would be surprised.

That was why Iruka knew that things needed to change, and soon. Because, as it was, Naruto's skills had already grown beyond what his academy instructor was capable of, so continuing to rely on Iruka's input would only make it so that Naruto would eventually hit a wall. Naruto would not be able to overcome this wall without instructions from a teacher far beyond the chunin's abilities to give.

Iruka smiled. He knew just who to talk to…

* * *

XXX

* * *

Hiruzen Sarutobi was smiling.

In his crystal ball, the Hokage watched Iruka lead Naruto back into town for a lunch at Ichiraku Ramen. Immensely glad now that he had pointed Iruka in Naruto's way, Hiruzen sat back and steeples his hands in front of his face.

There was still a lot to do, of course. Two weeks of constant training did not a Hokage make. No less, Hiruzen felt confident now that Naruto was starting to realize what made him strong, and would use these real world lessons to better himself. As long as Naruto strived to be better than he was, then Hiruzen had hope that Naruto would one day prove to the world his worth and value as not only a ninja but also as a person and a citizen of the Village Hidden in the Leaves.

Iruka no doubt had realized at this point that Naruto was beyond his skills to teach. The next likely choice for an instructor that Iruka would recommend would be Guy Might, who was notorious for turning Rock Lee into a formidable ninja. Of course, Guy was lucky to find a student so similar to him that the boy could adapt and improve upon the Iron Fist taijutsu style that Guy employed. As the village's official taijutsu expert, Guy would be the perfect choice to help Naruto create his own unique taijutsu style.

However, the aged Sarutobi wanted Naruto to learn more than just taijutsu. For his plans to come into fruition Naruto needed to be more than just a tank. Absorbing and throwing out damage was one thing, but Naruto needed to be able to work in any situation against any kind of opponent.

Nevertheless, at the very least, it was a start.

* * *

XXX

* * *

"So, what are we doing again?" Naruto wondered, narrowing his eyes and holding his arms behind his head as he followed his old academy instructor Iruka Umino.

"I told you before, Naruto," Iruka sighed, wondering how Naruto could remember certain things in perfect details years later and forget other things within moments of hearing them. "We are going to see Guy Might. He is a jounin and the village's premiere specialist in taijutsu. He is also a jounin instructor for genin team 9. Not only will he be able to help you understand and develop your own taijutsu style, but you'll be able to interact with his students, who are around your age…" Iruka smiled and reached over to ruffle the boy's hair, getting a frustrated huff from Naruto as the child backed off. "You did say that you were getting lonely without me around to talk to…"

"I get all that," Naruto groaned, rolling his eyes and picking his pace up to match his ex-sensei's again. It was not as if Naruto was against the idea of training with another instructor, just the fact that he would miss his time socializing with Iruka. "I just don't see why you can't continue to train me is all…" he eyed his instructor thoughtfully, frowning.

"The truth is," Iruka began, scratching at his nose in embarrassment, "That there is nothing left for me to teach you. You have done such an awesome job at learning everything I throw at you that it would be a waste for you continue learning taijutsu from me. Besides, learning from Guy does not mean that I won't still have things to teach you – there is more to life then fighting, after all…" Iruka pointed out. Naruto frowned, folding his arms up behind his head and glaring at the sky.

"Like what?" he grumbled. Iruka smiled fondly.

Soon enough they could hear the unmistakable sound of training. The yells of male and female voices, the sound of fists slapping against wood, skin slapping metal, the swishing of weapons through the air, these sounds filled the forest as Naruto and Iruka went in search of this man named Guy and his genin team.

"If I'm not mistaken," Iruka chuckled, nodding in the direction of the noises, "That would be them. Ebisu said that Guy was probably in Training Ground 12, so I guess we have found it," he chuckled as Naruto perked up.

A barrage of kunai accompanied their entry into the clearing that this genin team had taken to training within. With only a slight amount of concentration Naruto lazily summoned a handful of Shadow Clones, half of which instantly turned into kunai that the human clones used to deflect the barrage of enemy kunai.

Practicing ninjutsu had the side effect of helping a ninja grow used to manipulating their chakra a certain way. The ninja using the jutsu over time built up a memory of how to mold the chakra in their body, and eventually could remember the situation so completely that they eventually did not even need a hand seal. Naruto was not quite at that level yet, but had trained with his Shadow Clone jutsu so much that he only needed to use half of the Shadow Clone hand seal to summon clones. Of course, using half a hand seal meant that the jutsu only had about a portion of the substance that the full seal was capable. He could only create a few dozen Shadow Clones with the half of a hand seal, versus the several thousand he could make with the full hand seal and time to build up his chakra.

Still, a half dozen of clones was relatively easy to do, and Naruto was able to mask the motion by hiding his hands behind his head as he looked across the training field at the four people blinking in surprise at the action.

"Yo," Naruto said, greatly amused by their expression. It took a lot of self-control to keep from shouting about his awesomeness, but the thousands of hours spent on his own had given him time to take a look at how other people viewed him…and Naruto had not been happy. Despite enjoying being who he was, it did not seem that other people enjoyed hanging out with a hyperactive knucklehead. As an attention starved child, Naruto was willing to make compromises just to find him some friends to call his own. That was one reason why Naruto could ignore the way Sakura beat on him or belittled and insulted him. She was his first crush, after all, and he dearly held onto the hope that he could make her see him as the awesome hunky ninja that he was!

Lazily, Naruto waved; surprised when the young, dark haired boy that appeared to be a year older then he was, suddenly sprouted a fire in his eyes and began hopping around.

"Ah, Guy-sensei, he is so cool! What should I do?" the boy shouted, looking to the man that he appeared to have inherited the same facial genes.

"Lee!" Guy said, turning to the boy now, grinning from ear to ear, "When faced with such a hip young man it is necessary to express your youthful flames in the correct manner! You two must spar!"

"Yes, Guy-sensei," Lee saluted, before turning back to stare determinedly at Naruto.

"Err…you aren't serious, are you?" A large bead of sweat accumulated on the back of Naruto's head as he locked gazes with the determined "Lee" boy. Lee suddenly disappeared and only the instincts ingrained from thousands of hours of sparring with his clones allowed Naruto to jump back enough to avoid the sudden axe-kick that slammed into the spot he had been standing mere seconds before. The force of the blow cracked the ground and sent up clods of dirt and rock. Naruto gulped.

"You, whoever you are," Lee stated, taking up his fighting stance and staring Naruto down, "Please, fight me."

"Um, Guy," Iruka said, moving to address the jounin sensei of the three genin.

"Not now Iruka, can you not see that Lee and I are basking in the flames of our youth!" Guy laughed. His other two genin shook their head at the sheer ridiculousness of their sensei and teammate.

"But Guy, I need to talk to you about Naruto," Iruka said, and Guy laughed heartily.

"So, his name is Naruto, then?" Guy chuckled. Then he shouted to his mini-clone. "Lee, you must introduce yourself to the boy!"

"Lee" snapped around to salute Guy, shouting, "Yes, Guy-sensei!" then he turned around, smiled, and said, "It is customary to first introduce one's self before asking another's name, therefore, my name is Rock Lee, the strongest genin in the Village Hidden in the Leaves!" at this statement Naruto smiled.

"Okay," Naruto did not know what it was about Lee, but for some reason he felt strangely happy. As if Lee's energy and joy was contagious and spread to everyone around him. It was certainly nice to meet such an honestly good person. "My name is Naruto Uzumaki, future Hokage of the Village Hidden in the Leaves! Believe it!" He threw out his hand and gave a thumb's up, smiling. At the introduction Lee was crying tears of amazement, while Guy was laughing.

From next to Guy Might, the dark haired boy known as Neji Hyuuga turned to his sensei and said, "Are you fucking serious?"

"Well, it is nice to know that Naruto is still the same as always," Iruka smiled helplessly at the incredulous expressions of Guy's other students' faces. He shrugged and looked back to Guy, saying, "Anyway, I came to ask you, Guy, if you would mind helping Naruto develop his own taijutsu style…" Guy began to grin, his teeth pinging with the sunlight reflecting upon his face, making a bead of sweat drop down Iruka's head.

"Of course!" Guy exclaimed, laughing. Then he grew serious, "But only if Naruto proves that he came keep up with Lee's training…"

"Uh…" Iruka blinked, surprised.

"Alright, let's get started, then," Naruto stated, cracking his knuckles and lowering his body into a loose fighting stance as his clones that had remained standing around the two boys while watching the short exchange between their creator, Lee, Iruka and Guy each took up stances around Rock Lee. Lee spared a brief, evaluating glance across all the orange wearing clones, before seemingly disregarding them as a non-threat. Naruto frowned, annoyed at the other boy's causal dismissal of his abilities, before tensing and rushing forward.

Before he could blink, Lee had spun and slapped his hand away at the same time planting the heel of his foot into Naruto's stomach. Naruto went flying back a few meters while his clones closed the distance between them and Rock Lee. Another blink and Lee had thrown out a compliment of punches and kicks that forced all his clones to dispel, even the ones masquerading as kunai when they transformed back into their human shape.

Dazed, Naruto slowly climbed to his knees, glaring across the field at Rock Lee who was smiling serenely at him, not aware of Naruto's frustration. A second later Naruto was coughing out a glob of blood, wiping his mouth as he tried to make sense of Lee.

Naruto was not used to dealing with people stronger then himself since he had begun training with his Shadow Clones. He had arrogantly believed after hearing from Iruka that he had learned everything the chunin could teach that he was more than a match for his fellow genin. However, the idea that Lee could beat him so easily…

Naruto took a deep breath and focused his mind.

The meditation techniques that he had learned through his Shadow Clones helped him rationalize and logically assess battle situations. Naruto was more than annoyed at himself at his own self-importance, almost like Sasuke Uchiha! However, he could understand it. Going his whole life struggling even to survive, then suddenly to find everything immensely easy had bloated his ego. It was better to learn of his inadequacies now and address them then while on a mission when his life was on the line.

Still, Naruto wanted to be the best, but now he knew more than ever that that was a long way from now. For now, it would be best not to get cocky and bite off more than he could chew. At the very least, he could have fun!

The girl in the team was cheering Lee on, while Guy was giving his own encouragement that had Lee smiling from ear to ear. The last boy in the group, Rock Lee's other teammate, was watching the two of them with a _very_ serious expression on his face, his veins bulging around his eyes.

"Oh, this is going to be fun," Naruto rose to his feet and spat out a glob of blood onto the ground, smiling, "Get ready to learn why I am known as the Leaf Village's number one most unpredictable ninja!" He laughed as he threw his hands up into the cross shaped seal of the Shadow Clone jutsu, covering himself and the whole clearing with smoke. His voice carried through the smoke, shouting, "Let's go wild!"

In the next second, Lee spun rapidly around and sent the smoke hurtling away, revealing that there were several dozen Naruto clones all smirking at him, surrounding him on all sides.

Lee smiled and said, "Ah, so _this_ is the infamous Shadow Clone jutsu… Guy-sensei told me about its effectiveness…however," Lee spun as a clone charged, but was surprised when the clone ducked his kick and threw its fist.

Lee moved his head to the side, the clone passing him by as Lee pushed his momentum forward and flipped around the two clones charging him. Smiling, Lee threw his fists forwards and dispelled the clones.

"However," Lee said, patiently, turning to snatch two shuriken out of the air, "The Shadow Clone jutsu splits your chakra equally among you and the clones, meaning that…" the shuriken in his grip began glowing, so Lee hurried to throw them away. As the two shuriken embedded into the trunks of two trees at the edge of the tree line, the shuriken suddenly exploded, knocking the two trees in half.

"Meaning that…?" one of the clones grinned, moving into Lee's space.

Lee knocked the clone's sword away, not surprised to find the sword it was holding transformed back into another as Lee dispelled its wielder. The clone threw a kick that Lee had to raise his arms to block, making him take a single step back at the unexpected strength in the blow.

Something snagged underneath his foot, and on instinct Lee did a backflip, barely managing to avoid the crude leg trap that he had stumbled on, which immediately became a Shadow Clone. As Lee was falling to the ground, three more clones threw a fourth at him. Lee whirled in the air to send his leg crashing on its head, but the clone jerked aside at the last moment, smiling.

"Boom," it sang, just as it began to glow.

Lee's eyes widened, just as the explosion erupted around him and the clone. However, on the ground Guy was still smiling, patting the girl's head reassuringly.

"Aw, man, and I was sure that would get you that time," Naruto whined, or at least what _appeared_ to be the orange wearing knucklehead. He scratched at his cheek, looking across the field at the slightly smoking form of a kneeling Rock Lee who seemed completely at ease with his near death experience.

"You are quite strong, Naruto," Lee smiled warmly, apparently delighted to find someone that could challenge him in taijutsu, "Your use of Shadow Clones, the Shadow Clone Explosion ninjutsu and the Transformation jutsu is top notch! You are definitely worthy to be called my rival!" Then Lee suddenly became serious. "However, I'm afraid that you have no hope to win. Give up." Naruto grinned.

"I never give up," Naruto smiled, as all the Naruto's in the clearing entered back into their loose taijutsu stance that was reminiscent of the Academy's Basic Taijutsu. "Besides, you have fallen right into my trap!" Naruto sang.

"Then prepare yourself, Naruto," Lee smiled.

It became obvious what trap Naruto meant when Lee began to charge. As his foot picked up off the ground, the clone hiding under the leaves exploded, forcing Lee to jump backwards, right into another hiding clone's path that grabbed Lee's hands. Lee stepped down on the clone to dispel it, but it was already too late as three more clones transformed into grappling line and spun around Lee's body, locking his arms and legs together. Despite their strength though, they were only clones, and the moment they began glowing Lee stretched his muscles and they immediately dispelled.

Nevertheless, Naruto was already moving, two clothes reaching under his feet to lift him up and throw him in the air. Four other clones closed in on Lee, who shrugged aside their attacks easily, dispelling them with several casual strikes from his fists and feet. As Naruto fell down upon Lee, the green genin threw up his foot and smacked Naruto across the face. The blow launched the orange wearing boy clear across the clearing, only to spin around and land easily onto a tree trunk.

"As I have said," Lee said still smiling, "There is no way for you to beat me. Give up." However, Naruto was smiling.

"There's one problem with that," Naruto said, making a gesture around the clearing. "All these weapons piled up on the ground from your team training, and all those clones I created earlier…where did they all go?" Naruto smiled, crooning "Booooooom!"

"Wha…?" Lee mouthed, just as the discarded kunai underneath his feet exploded, forcing the boy to jump into the air. From the tree line, five clones followed the boy into the air. Lee spun to defend himself, throwing out punches and kicks, but had only dispelled four of the five when the last came in with an axe-kick. Lee caught the leg in his hands and grappled with the boy in the air, before pile driving the clone into the ground.

"My turn," Naruto sing-songed, just as four clones transformed from their weapon forms around Lee and began throwing a combination of punches and kicks into Lee's body before the boy could react.

From the sidelines both Lee's teammates' eyes widened at seeing another genin capable of landing even one strike on Lee's body, let alone a half dozen. Guy, on the other hand, just smiled wider.

As the Melee came to close, with Lee landing on the ground, the collected group of Naruto clones let out a sigh, while the Naruto in the tree line smiled.

It was not easy planning around Lee's superior abilities in taijutsu. Not only was Naruto forced to rely on trapping and surprising Lee with transformed clones while dog piling him with more clones, but Naruto had had to keep several clones in the tree line to watch the melee and dispel when Lee was in the correct position for a surprise attack. It was nice to see everything had worked out as he had planned.

However, Guy was grinning.

"Lee, take them off!" Guy shouted, instantly making the battered form of Rock Lee sit up, seemingly no worse for wear. Naruto watched this incredulously.

"Guy-sensei?" Lee wondered, looking to his jounin instructor. "But you said that I could only take them off when someone precious to me was in danger…?" the boy questioned. Guy nodded his head.

"I did," Guy said, smiling, "But this is an exception," at his words, Lee began to tear up.

"Guy-sensei!" then Lee wiped his face and stood up. Lee paused, before kneeling to the ground..

In the tree lines, Naruto began to sweat heavily, suddenly very worried as Lee began removing a pair of weights from his legs. Even at this distance, Naruto could make out the seals on the weights, which meant that they probably weighed a lot more than a few kilos, much like his weighted Shadow Clone clothing did. The problem was that Naruto had already removed his weighted clothing to deal with Rock Lee when he had weights on…so, if Rock Lee removed them…!

The next instant, Rock Lee dropped his leg weights, showing to Naruto just how much of a bad idea it was to let his enemy gain a tactical advantage, the weights forming craters around Lee's form. The next instant Naruto could think about very little else as Lee simply _vanished_ accompanied by all his clones transforming so that they could dog pile the genin, and suddenly dispelling at the same time.

Following that moment, a great force pounded into his chest, throwing Naruto through the tree that he was standing on, and the one after it, and the one after it, until the same force that had hit him before appeared behind his falling body and began to juggle him around in the air.

A few minutes later, Naruto crashed into the ground, sore and bleeding. He stared up at the sky, not surprised when Lee's face appeared in his vision, grinning in triumph.

"Yatta! I did it!" Lee shouted, and through his pain, Naruto was distinctively amused at the boy's reaction. Lee quickly helped Naruto to his feet, patting the boy's bruised back and almost making Naruto's legs buckle from the power in the genin's hands. "Nice match, Naruto." Lee laughed.

"Yeah," Naruto coughed, embarrassed as Lee had to drag him back to the Training Grounds to meet with Lee's teacher. Guy was grinning at them as they returned, and Iruka was just staring at the destroyed clearing in shock.

"A fine show indeed, Lee!" Guy laughed exuberantly. "And you, too, Naruto!"

"Guy-sensei!" Lee exclaimed.

"Yes, I think you will make a fine sparring partner for Lee," Guy claimed, walking over to examine the beaten blond boy who was already starting to look better than he had several minutes beforehand. "I'm afraid Lee's abilities make him well beyond most other children his age, so to find a boy as powerful as you are will definitely help Lee grow as a shinobi and a man!"

"So does that mean that you will help Naruto with his taijutsu style?" Iruka questioned. Guy laughed and patted the chunin on the shoulder, making the scarred man wince in pain.

"Indeed I shall," Guy said. "It is only fair, after all. Not only will his efforts help Lee to grow, but by developing his own taijutsu he will develop the skills to push Lee to new heights in his training!"

"Oh, Guy-Sensei!" Lee shouted. Naruto blanched.

"Now, tell me, Naruto," Guy said, making Naruto look to the jounin now in confusion, "Am I right in assuming that your taijutsu style will rely on the use of Shadow Clones?" he questioned. Naruto smiled.

"You bet!" he chuckled. Guy smiled.

"Then you must have an impressive recovery rate," Guy then turned and pointed towards one of the three logs close to the tree line, shouting, "Very well, we shall begin now!"

Naruto slumped, groaning.

* * *

XXX

* * *

Guy's training was a real revelation for Naruto.

If Naruto had thought training on his own was hard, then Guy's training was downright suicide.

However, out of all the other children around his age, Rock Lee was the closest physically to Naruto. Simply put, Rock Lee's recovery rate was insane, liken to the healing ability of a container for a Tailed Beast. On the other hand, Lee's recovery rate had nothing to do with external forces healing his body, or some long forgotten bloodline trait that was perfect for building muscle…no, it was done all through sheer determination!

Finding out that Rock Lee could have, and would have beaten him in their initial spar was a very telling sign of Lee's abilities. Lee would have won eventually, though it would have taken much longer and would not have been as one-sided. The only reason why Guy had wanted Lee to take off his weights was to show the difference between their abilities and give a goal for Naruto to strive.

Truthfully, Lee was probably the physically strongest genin in their generation and most genin in Lee's class and in Naruto's would not have been able to compete with him even while wearing his weights. The only reason why Neji was able to compete with Lee was due to the presence of Lee's weights, Neji's Byakyugan and Neji's Gentle Fist style of taijutsu. Guy refused to let Lee take off his weights while fighting Neji, preferring to use their rivalry as fuel to strengthen both boys.

Naruto knew that Rock Lee out classed him easily, but that did not stop him from trying to close the distance between their abilities. In the next two weeks following their initial meeting Naruto had upped the weight of his clone training-weights to roughly twenty times his body weight, and still he was leagues below Lee who wore something like fifty times his own body weight at all times.

Of course, this was all disregarding Lee's sensei, Guy, who wore something like two or three hundred times his own body weight. There was a reason why he was the Hidden Leaf Village's taijutsu specialist and had a physical strength comparable to the legendary Sannin Tsuande Senju.

As it was, both Naruto and Lee had a ways to go before they were even in Guy's league, though they were quickly catching up. Motivated by each other, the two exuberant young boys were quick to increase their training-weights, adding another milestone every few days.

Physically, a taijutsu specialist was superior to the average ninja in every way, being faster and stronger then the majority of ninja in the world _without_ chakra. However, the exceptionally skilled ninja, such as Guy's much alluded to eternal rival (who Guy somehow made a reference to every two hours or so) were able to use their chakra to increase their physical abilities well beyond what a taijutsu specialist was capable of. That was where the Eight Chakra Gates came into play.

Naruto learned that Lee could open Four of the Eight Gates, increasing his strength to ridiculously monstrous levels, and that the boy was working on the fifth. Guy, of course, could open all eight, but since he was still alive, it meant that he had never needed to open the Eighth Gate, yet.

Both Guy and Lee were training Naruto to open the First Gate, the Gate of Opening, but Naruto had difficulty incorporating the Lotus into his unique taijutsu style as the Iron Fist style primarily used it. Still, Lee had the fortunate ability of dumbing down Guy's very vocal and very complicated explanations, something that helped Naruto's training immensely.

Most of Naruto's training in the two weeks that followed his first spar with Lee involved the development of his unique taijutsu style. Calling it, the Shadow Brigade was quite an apt name. Naruto learned that there was more involved in creating a taijutsu style then just "throw punch here, kick there" type of mindset. Naruto and Iruka had started right, but were both unprepared for the complexities involved in making a taijutsu style that forced the user of the style to work in conjunction with what was essentially a mob. Thankfully, Shadow Clones were easy to work with, and Rock Lee was ever helpful, giving advice in the holes in Naruto's style. Lee even took the time to converse with Naruto's clones, treating them like real people unlike the way that everyone else dismissed them outright just because they were chakra constructs. Not only was the taijutsu training immensely hard, but it was also very rewarding, both because Naruto was growing stronger and because conversing with Lee was a lot of fun.

In the meantime, a new scheme to earn money occupied Naruto's free time when he was not training, eating, or sleeping. It all started with a conversation after his initial spar with Lee, between him and Lee's teammate, Tenten.

"I can't believe that you even managed to hit Lee, let alone forced him to take off his weights," Tenten shook her head while rubbing a paste onto Naruto's bruised stomach, the boy wincing at the sting.

"I…really doubt that he needed to take them off," Naruto groaned, hanging his head and trying to nurse his wounded pride. Tenten laughed at his defeated expression.

"Still, I can see what Guy-sensei means," the girl pointed out, patting the blond boy's shoulder and making him wince in pain, "Outside of you, no one has pushed Lee more than Neji. Having someone that he can have a friendly rivalry with will definitely help both you and Lee…" she smiled reassuringly.

"Yeah, yeah," Naruto grumbled, reaching out to pluck the container of paste from her unresisting fingers, and dipping a finger into the container so that he could rub the substance into his stomach. "Just wish that it did not hurt as much…" Tenten smiled.

"You are recovering nicely though," she nodded to the bruises already fading on his arms and face, "I can see how you got so strong so fast if you can heal such damage this quickly…"

"What is this stuff, anyways?" Naruto asked, more for something to take his mind off his own wounded pride and the reminder of the demon inside him. Tenten smiled at his question.

"Oh, this?" she asked, motioning to the container of cream, "It's a healing paste that I made by combining several herbs found around the village and combining them with oils and mineral water collected from the local hot springs. I made it when I still wanted to be a medic ninja, but almost forgot about it after I gave up on being a medic until my dad found the recipe in some of my old things and decided to start selling it in our store and at the hospital…" She trailed off at the suddenly starry-eyed stare that Naruto was giving her.

"Wow, you can do that?" Naruto wondered, surprised that you could make a profit off foraging medicinal herbs. He had briefly looked up medical jutsu when he had read about it in the Fourth Hokage's interview, but most of the explanations were well beyond his ability to grasp and he all but ignored it. "That's awesome, Tenten!"

"Yeah, well," Tenten blushed, unused to being praised by anyone else then her family and teammates. Suddenly, she smiled widely, something that Naruto mirrored, "It's because I'm an awesome kunoichi, you know?"

As they were laughing together, a plan began forming in the back of his mind. Since he was already hunting for herbs for to use as spices for his food supply, Naruto wondered if he could use the vegetation that he gathered in the wilds to supplement his wallet.

Of course, this got him started thinking about medic ninja, and what could possibly make them so special. As he was thinking this, Tenten was wrapping his chest and stomach with bandages, seemingly not paying him any mind. Finally, Naruto asked her, and so she explained.

"Well, not only is medical jutsu extremely hard because you have to have _perfect_ chakra control, but you also have to know stuff about poisons, antidotes, field dressing, and there are tons of really cool medical jutsu that can be used as a weapon in a real ninja battle. An example is the chakra scalpel, which could even cut _under_ the skin without _breaking_ it…" She trailed off.

"So, it is a really important position to be for a ninja," Naruto stated. Tenten nodded her agreement, smiling widely.

"Of course, since you need a medic to patch you up if you are wounded, after all…" Tenten stated. Naruto grinned.

If Naruto did not know better, he might have accused Tenten of challenging him.

If he planned to be Hokge, then he might as well and study up on _all_ the ninja arts!

This is what began the next search for information on another obscure type of jutsu.

The very first chapter on the book of medical jutsu that his clone had read ("So you want to be a Medic?") showed that to even begin the basic medical ninjutsu exercises a ninja needed to both complete and master no less than a hundred successively harder chakra control exercises, something that had made his clone groan in frustration. Nevertheless, Naruto set his Shadow Clones upon the chakra control exercises, just for the simple fact that they would improve his normal jutsu at the very least. Besides, splitting a waterfall in two with just a wave of one's hand sounded cool!

While this was going on, his Shadow Clones were continuing to explore Fuinjutsu, and finally began to make some headway into the book; actually completing two chapters' various examples for seal experiments. Of course, making a sealing scroll to keep his food inside so that they would not spoil was only the beginning. There was a lot more to discover, and he still had one more week to train.

Finally, Naruto found himself at a level where he was satisfied with his progress in taijutsu, his known ninjutsu, his stealth and trap skills, his hunting and foraging, his language, math, and science skills, and his Fuinjutsu and Medical Jutsu skills. He was by no means proficient in majority of his skills, but he was at a level that most of his skills balanced each other out. Naruto then decided to work on his ninjutsu, something that he had waited three weeks to experiment with…

That is when Naruto's headaches began…

* * *

XXX

* * *

Hiruzen watched as Naruto made his way through the training grounds. As he had predicted, Naruto intended to start his ninjutsu training soon, which meant that he would need a large open space to practice them safely. The Hokage had prepared for this, and placed the next piece in his game in the path that Naruto would most likely follow. It seemed that Hiruzen was wise to give _her_ the day off…

Time would tell if Naruto could convince _her_ to train him. However, Hiruzen felt that even a little interaction between the two of them would be good for both. Whether _she_ would be willing to take Naruto seriously and not immediately brush him off was anyone's guess.

Naruto had one week to train before team assignments. As expected, his skills as a ninja and his physical power had increased tremendously. Of course, many of his classmates had likewise grown, but never to the extent that Naruto had. Whereas before his genin test Naruto had been the dead last, the weakest of his classmates, now he was one of the strongest, if not _the _strongest member of his class. Two others in his class rivaled him in pure skill and ability alone while a third rivaled him just because of his ability to strategize and Naruto's still limited understanding of strategy. While Naruto was physically stronger then Sasuke and Shino, their skills in ninjutsu and their clan techniques were obvious. Shino, at the very least, had his clan's kikaichu beetles to drain Naruto's chakra, though Naruto's ability to recover chakra would make a fight between them difficult. Sasuke would not pull his punches, and would take any chance to win that he could get, and his constantly growing skill in fire jutsu would make Naruto's life difficult in a fight unless he developed the Earth style jutsu that the Village Hidden in Stone had made famous. Finally, Shikamaru's intelligence was unmatched, and the only way that Naruto would be able to win in a fight between them is if the boy would, and he most certainly would, overpower the Nara heir with his chakra and a stream of jutsu and bullheadedness.

With a week left before Team Assignments, Naruto was already showing promise as a ninja. It was enough to make Hiruzen reconsider his original team placements, especially now that he was putting the last touches on a letter to his last and only loyal student, Jiraiya of the Sannin and Toad Sage of Mount Myoboku.

It read:

_The little Maelstrom is showing remarkable promise. Seeing him exploring his potential has made me quite nostalgic. Have you had any luck finding the _others?

_Hiruzen Sarutobi._

* * *

To Be Continued…

* * *

Author's Note:

There are a few things to discuss about this chapter before I call it a night.

As some of you are no doubt wondering: what is up with my power levels?

Well, in canon, Naruto beat Mizuki who was able to defeat Iruka without hardly any trouble at all. Taking a look at the information given to us, I figured that the only chunin that become instructors for the Ninja Academy are the ones with no potential to advance and grow in their careers, so the village places them into a position that they would actually be able to do some good in instead of uselessly wasting village resources. Because of this reasoning, I figured that Mizuki and Iruka were some of the weaker chunin in the series, which is how Naruto and his classmates were able to surpass them so quickly in canon.

Like Formulaic, I do not believe that judging a ninja's skills by comparing them to a ninja rank as being accurate. Therefore, I went with a different idea, and assigned letter classes to different ranges of power levels, and three tiers to each letter class to denote the range of abilities and power that a ninja has in each class.

In the context of this story, this range of abilities for each class of ninja makes sense, especially when you take into account that a fresh-genin canon Sasuke was even actually able to _touch_ Kakashi who is somewhere around upper-tier A-Class in this fic. With this in mind, given an extra month to train, Naruto and his classmates would grow to be a lot stronger and more skilled by the time Team Assignments came around. Nevertheless, _none_ of Naruto's generation is overpowered; they are just capable of taking on the chunin exams fresh out of the academy in this story.

The main theme I want to try for this story is a lot similar to Formulaic's, and yet different. For one, my version of Naruto might seem stronger initially then Formulaic's, but that is only in the context of _physical_ ability. If you recall, the only _other_ jutsu that he has mastered besides his Shadow Clones, Transformation, and the Replacement jutsu is Shadow Clone Explosion, which means that I have reduced a lot of the firepower at his fingertips, versus Formulaic's version of Naruto who has several dozen jutsu under his belt by the time Team Assignments begin. I know that jutsu does not equal a "strong" Naruto. Not when you take in the fact that a Naruto with a lot of jutsu will not understand as much about the fundamentals of his jutsu as a Naruto with very few jutsu, but it DOES mean that Naruto has more tricks up his sleeve to use; and that is what my Naruto is all about!

Tricks!

"A ninja's greatest weapon is deception", many people have said repeatedly in the Naruto canon. Well, I am taking that literally. It always annoyed me that so many people could think that Naruto is not capable of being a good ninja when his pranks always forced the _entire_ village to look for him. Hell, he even _painted _the _god damn Hokage Monument _in broad daylight, and no one noticed until he was done! How the hell can he _not_ be a good ninja when he has such stealth skills under his belt?

Which was why it pissed me off that the canon never showed Naruto _using_ those skills!

My Naruto will not have a ton of jutsu under his built. At least, I do not plan such right away. The jutsu that he does he will have mastered to the point that even the most harmless jutsu he employs becomes his enemy's worst nightmare. Out of all the jutsu he will use, the one that he will become used to and rely on will be the Shadow Clone jutsu, which he will abuse _religiously_!

That is the main difference between my version of Naruto and Formulaic's.

This actually makes sense, because, while Naruto is _learning_, his childhood was full of emotional abuse, neglect, and teachers actually wanted to _impair_ his ability to learn. Naruto is not suddenly going to jump start his brain and go from a complete idiot to some kind of uber genius. Learning will be slow and difficult for him, as noted by the fact that he _still_ has to keep a dictionary by him at all times while reading, and is still working on his math and science skills.

I am trying to write a Naruto as true to the canon as possible while slowly turning him from a dumbass to a complete badass. However, to do so I must take it slow and actually show some damn character development!

Naruto is not going suddenly to understand any jutsu he sees, he is not going suddenly to conclude that Sakura is a complete bitch and that he should have her arrested for abusing other children, nor will he suddenly realize that Sasuke is a complete jerk who he should not waste his time on.

It is all about character development. I am already showing it with his interactions with Iruka, Guy, and Lee, much in the same way that Formulaic is currently doing. Guy and Lee are just such nice people that Naruto cannot help but connect with instantly, and Lee is such a better rival then Sasuke that it will help his character develop to actually be friends with a person that generally appreciates his company, and who will push him to grow stronger.

I have other things that I have planned to develop Naruto's character, specifically some things to do with the up and coming genin Assignments and the infamous Wave Arc…important events that will greatly affect Naruto as a person and a ninja.

I have some other things to talk about, too. Specifically, I want to talk about how some of my logic conflicts with Formulaic's logic.

Formulaic gave a good argument on the Transformation ("Henge") jutsu that Naruto uses. While the canon implies that everyone who uses the Transformation jutsu takes on the physical appearance of whatever person or thing he or she becomes, canon Naruto is the only one shown to take advantage of this fact. Formulaic's argument that the person transforming has a limit to what they become makes sense, but conflicts with what Kishimoto has shown in canon.

Formulaic transformation jutsu says that when Naruto transforms, he takes on the shape of whatever he becomes but retains his musculature, nervous system, visceral system, and all his other inside bits while only his outside changes. Meaning: While Naruto could take the shape of an animal, he would not actually "become" that animal. This contradicts canon, so I decided to fine tune the logic behind this a bit.

In my logic, like Formulaic's, most ninja use a genjutsu technique to "transform" into the shape of whatever they want to look like, versus Naruto's ninjutsu transformation technique. Because of the ninjutsu, Naruto and his clones take on the physical properties of what they become, save the fact that their chakra network stays the same, allowing their minds to exist inside the shell that they "Create". Of course, Naruto does not know the theory behind his transformation technique, and is unaware of just how truly impressive it is for him to have invented it at all.

The Shadow Clones are constructs of chakra, meaning that their "bodies" are just collections of chakra imitating physical form. However, with my logic, when a clone "transforms" their body, they unfortunately convert their chakra into physical matter, which dulls their minds. That is why the clones are not aware of the outside world when they do not have any sensory organs to "see" the world while transformed. That is why the clones have to rely on other clones to know what to do.

Naruto, meanwhile, does not have this problem has he had the innate ability to sense chakra that all ninja seem to have, or, at least he does when faced against any opponent with a substantial amount of chakra. Because of that, he can perform the Fuma Shuriken super-awesome-jutsu trick that Formulaic fussed about in his fic, because while he is "unaware" of the world around him, he can still "see" the world with his chakra senses.

Other things about character's skills, like Gai's ridiculous body weights. Canon shows that Guy has the physical abilities to compete with S-Class ninja like the Akatsuki, even beat Kisame who was one of Akatsuki's strongest ninja. With that in mind, I came to the assumption that not only does Guy rely on the Eight Gates, but that he usually keeps ridiculous amounts of weight on his person at all times. So much so that Lee's weights seem pathetic in comparison.

So in answer to that, I came up with the logic that all ninja save Guy and Lee regularly infuse their body with chakra, increasing their speed and strength to levels comparable to Guy's. Because of that, I see nothing wrong with Naruto and Lee's ability to increase their training weights at such an extreme rate because not only will there be ninja who will make their lives difficult even with their training-weights to help their abilities, but also they will both always be there to compete against each other.

Naruto will probably never be able to equal the weight training that Lee uses, meaning that he will never be on the same league as Lee physically, but once he learns how to infuse his body with chakra then they will be more on even grounds.

As I said, I want Naruto to be powerful, but not overpowered. Truthfully, I plan for this early specialization of taijutsu that he is doing right now to come back and bite him in the ass later on. I call it balance, people!

I am trying to find a compromise between Formulaic's logic and Kishimoto's insanity. Taking a realistic approach to jutsu is just one of the many benefits of finding a middle ground, even if this story is not as realistic as it _can_ be. Naruto will not even be approaching over-powered until Shippuden because he will always be facing stronger and stronger opponents as the story progresses through the original canon. He will be able to face the stronger enemies, but he will not be able to defeat them on his own, just able to either escape or run them off with the aid of allies. I want Naruto's growth to be continual and obvious, but not so exaggerated that he one shots everyone that he faces. Just the majority of his classmates will not even be able to face him down in combat. He probably will not even find any competition in kids his age until the chunin exams start, most notably Gaara who became the Kazekage of his village sometime after the original series stopped running and before Shippuden began. Naruto, Sasuke, Shino, and Shikamaru are the most skilled members of Naruto's generation, so I do not see anything wrong with the fact that they can take on chunin level ninja easily because canon shows that they could do so repeatedly.

I want Naruto to be strong, but within reason, in the context of the other powerful ninja around him.

Finally, I have alluded to the fact there at the end that the Team Assignments will be different, and they will be. Hiruzen is not just going to ignore Naruto's growing abilities and put him on the same team as in canon. However, whom I _do_ choose to put on Naruto's team and who will be his team's sensei will make sense, in the context of this story. Remember, what I am aiming for is BALANCE!

I guess that is really all I have to say right now.

As always, review and tell me what you think.

Ta.

Professor Image.


End file.
